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MEMOIRS   OF 
ALPHONSE    DAUDET 


2- 


ALPHONSE  DAUDET 

BY 

LEON    DAUDET 

TO   WHICH   IS   ADDED 

THE    DAUDET    FAMILY 

("  Mon  Frere  et  Moi") 
BY 

ERNEST    DAUDET 
TRANSLATED    BY    CHARLES    DE   KAY 


:  BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND    COMPANY 
1898 


Copyright,  1898, 
By  Little,  Brown,  and  Company. 


A  a  rights  reserved. 


©inibcrsttg  |3re3S: 
John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge,  U.S.A. 


DEDICATION 

I  dedicate  this  book,  in  all  piety,  to  Madame 
Alphonse  Daudet,  my  dearly  beloved  mother  — 
my  mother  who  discreetly  aided  and  encouraged 
her  husband  in  all  his  good  as  well  as  wretched 
hours  and  created  about  him  that  atmosphere 
of  tender  reflection  in  which  he  was  able  to  live, 
work  and  die  under  the  protection  of  a  pure, 
pensive  and  restful  soul. 

LEON    DAUDET, 

Paris,  January,  1898. 


PREFACE. 


His  tomb  is  hardly  closed  and  I  set  myself  to 
write  these  words.  I  do  it  with  a  brave  heart,  but 
broken  by  a  frightful  sorrow,  for  the  one  of  whom 
I  shall  speak  was  not  only  a  father  and  husband 
of  the  most  exemplary  sort,  he  was  also  my  teacher, 
my  counsellor  and  my  great  friend.  There  was  not 
a  line  written  by  me  which  I  did  not  read  to  him 
while  the  ink  was  wet ;  there  was  not  a  thought  of 
mine,  the  true  value  of  which  I  did  not  beg  him 
to  state :  there  was  not  one  of  my  feelings,  the 
power  or  the  origin  of  which  I  concealed  from 
him. 

This  life  which  I  owe  to  him,  the  beauty, 
dignity  and  importance  of  which  he  caused  me 
every  day  to  perceive ;  this  life,  burning  with 
admiration  for  his  intellectual  and  moral  beauty ; 
this  life  which  he  scrupulously  and  jealously  guided 
and  which  he  filled  with  pride  at  the  example 
offered  by  his  own  —  I  presented  this  life  to  him  as 
it  proceeded  in  order  that  he  might  judge  and 
strengthen  it. 

And  now,  although  he,  my  darling  one !  exists 
no    longer,  as  I  march  onward  through  this  sor- 


viii  Preface. 

rowfully  dark  night  toward  him,  the  beacon,  yet 
do  I  persevere  in  my  endeavor,  guided  by  the 
sound  of  his  voice  and  the  tender  fire  of  his  look. 

My  heart  overflows ;  I  shall  open  it  wide.  So 
many  noble  and  grand  things  which  he  has  said  to 
me  tremble  within  me  and  seek  an  exit !  I  shall 
permit  them  to  be  scattered  before  the  feet  of  his 
numberless  admirers.  The  latter  have  nothing  to 
fear ;  their  gentle  consoler  was  without  a  blot.  If  I 
turn  my  eyes  backward  over  the  path  of  my  exist- 
ence, already  harsh,  though  brief,  I  see  him  stand- 
ing calm  and  smiling  despite  his  torments,  showing 
an  indulgence  which  at  certain  critical  hours  has 
thrown  me  trembling  with  admiration  at  his  feet. 

But  it  is  not  only  for  what  he  was  in  regard  to 
myself,  or  to  my  brother,  my  sister  or  my  mother 
that  I  love  him;  it  is  also,  and  beyond  everything 
else,  for  his  humanity  which  shone  within  him  with 
so  profound  and  serene  a  splendor ;  for  his  vast 
and  sympathetic  comprehension  of  all  kinds  of 
things  and  all  sorts  of  people  !  Surely  seldom  has 
such  a  character  been  known  here  below  and  never 
in  a  more  splendid  form. 

I  write  for  you,  young  people,  and  for  you  also, 
old  men,  adults  male  or  female,  and  for  you  by 
preference,  ye  disinherited  ones  whom  the  world 
repulses  —  vagabonds,  luckless  ones  and  the  mis- 
understood !  The  extraordinary  thing  about  this 
writer  was  that  he  preferred  the  humble  and  the 
disinherited  of  fortune  to  all  others.  It  is  with  the 
pale  flowers  of  their  lives  that  he  wove  his  great 


Preface,  ix 

crown ;  it  was  by  relieving  their  distress  with 
words  or  with  a  discreet  action  that  he  closed  the 
circuit  of  hearts,  and,  as  it  were,  created  a  new  kind 
of  comprehension  in  his  harsh  day  and  generation. 

Oh,  most  generous  circulation  of  blood  !  I  have 
never  seen  my  father  angry  except  when  justice 
was  defrauded.  He  never  swerved  from  justice 
save  when  carried  away  by  pity.  And,  to  make  an 
end,  his  schooling  was  obtained  through  the  pain 
which  he  heroically  supported  for  the  love  of  his 
family  and  the  honor  of  human  life. 

Muddle  nothing,  ruin  nothing,  was  his  usual 
motto.  I  draw  inspiration  from  his  tomb,  but  I 
should  not  be  the  only  one  to  benefit  by  his  expe- 
rience, I  should  not  be  the  only  one  to  direct  his 
life  according  to  his  example.  I  believe  that  I 
am  imitating  him  to-day  when  I  draw  aside  the 
dark  veil  which  falls  about  a  deathbed,  permitting 
that  life-work  only  to  shine  with  brilliancy.  More- 
over, that  work  emanated  from  him  like  his  breath 
and  gesture.  So,  in  order  that  you  may  know  him 
better,  in  order  that  you  may  love  him  more  —  I 
mean  all  of  you,  big  and  little,  whose  unhappiness 
he  alleviated  as  by  enchantment — I  abandon  to 
you  in  part  my  filial  privilege  and  am  about  to 
allow  those  voices  to  be  heard  through  which  the 
heredity  and  the  paternal  affection  have  spoken 
that  are  the  occupants  of  my  respectful  soul. 


CONTENTS. 


Chaptbb  Page 

I.    Last  Moments i 

II.    Life  and  Literature i6 

III.  As  Father  and   as  Husband  —  The  Ven- 

dor OF  Happiness 89 

IV.  North  and  South 150 

V.    As  A  Man  of  Family 185 


APPENDIX. 

Concerning  the  Imagination.     A  Dialogue 

between  my  Father  and  Me.     .     .     .     201 


THE   DAUDET   FAMILY. 

My  Brother  and   I 289 


ALPHONSE   DAUDET. 


I. 

LAST   MOMENTS. 

It  is  a  fact  that  my  father  was  ill  for  many  long 
years,  but  he  supported  his  sufferings  so  bravely, 
he  accepted  his  restricted  life  with  such  a  smiling 
resignation,  that  we  had  come  to  the  point  —  we, 
meaning  my  mother,  my  brother  and  myself — 
of  divesting  ourselves  a  little  of  the  anxiety  we  all 
felt  at  the  time  his  sufferings  began. 

All  the  same,  walking  supported  by  one  of  us 
and  resting  his  weight  on  his  silver-headed  cane  — 
in  regard  to  which  he  told  our  little  sister  and  his 
grandson  so  many  marvellous  legends  —  all  the 
same,  with  head  erect  and  eyes  bright  and  hand  held 
out  toward  the  friend  who  visited  him,  he  was  the  joy 
and  life  of  the  house.  This  family  which  he  cher- 
ished and  brightened  with  his  most  tender  looks  was 
kept  close  about  him ;  he  guarded  it  by  that  moral 
force  of  his  —  immense,  always  in  full  power  and 
ever  increasing  as  he  lived.  On  all  about  him  he 
breathed  an  atmosphere  of  kindness  and  of  con- 
fidence which  the  coldest  and  most  reserved  could 
not  evade. 

I 


2  Alp  house  Daudet. 

For  the  truth  of  this  I  call  to  witness  the  innu- 
merable friends  and  literary  comrades  and  strang- 
ers who  came  to  make  the  author  a  visit ;  without 
exception  they  found  him  ready  with  counsel  and 
help,  ready  with  those  precious  words  which  elicit 
confidences  and  calm  and  heal  the  soul. 

No  one  understood  as  he  did  the  path  to  hearts. 
He  himself  had  had  hardships  in  the  beginning 
and  his  extraordinary  sensitiveness,  which  I  shall 
presently  attempt  to  analyze,  caused  him  to  place 
vividly  before  his  own  mind  all  the  difficulties  and 
rebuffs  and  shames  others  might  have  met,  and  with 
unexampled  sharpness  and  vigor  in  particulars. 
When  a  man  stood  before  him  with  his  face  in  a 
strong  light  he  divined  him  and  summed  him  up 
with  a  precision  which  was  like  magic ;  but  he  was 
chary  of  words  and  only  used  his  eyes,  so  soft, 
veiled  and  yet  so  penetrating  !  "  The  look  out  of 
his  eyes  warmed  one "  —  that  was  the  phrase 
which  I  caught  from  so  many  lips  during  those 
days  of  mourning;  and  I  admired  the  justice  of 
the  expression.  Moreover,  confession  —  that  balm 
for  souls  which  indignation  or  disdain  has  closely 
imprisoned,  that  consolation  of  the  afflicted,  of  the 
abandoned  and  those  in  revolt — confession  came 
true  and  sincere  from  the  hearts  of  the  rudest 
people ;  yes,  the  ears  of  my  beloved  father  have 
had  to  hear  strange  avowals  ! 

I  believe  also  that  in  him  people  divined  a  veri- 
table ferment  of  indulgence  ;  his  love  of  pardon 
and  of  sacrifice  belonged  to  his  Catholic  blood. 
He  believed  that  every  crime  could  be  forgiven 


Last  Moments.  3 

and  that  nothing  was  absolutely  irreparable  when 
confronted  by  a  sincere  repentance.  So  many 
luckless  ones  are  captives  of  the  evil  Avhich  they 
themselves  have  caused  and  only  begin  their 
crimes  over  again  through  distress !  My  father 
had  a  final  argument ;  he  pointed  out  to  them 
how  he  himself  had  been  struck  by  illness  in  his 
mid  career,  and  how,  by  the  force  of  his  will, 
he  could  offer  himself  now  as  an  example.  His 
strength  of  argument  was  such  that  very  few  re- 
sisted him. 

And  then,  what  an  intimate  eloquence  was  his ! 
His  words  and  his  very  intonations  remain  in  my 
memory  quite  intact.  The  tone  was  not  the  same 
when  he  was  telling  some  story  in  lively,  splendid 
and  precise  words,  as  when  he  took  my  sufferings 
in  hand.  In  the  latter  case  he  employed  words 
which  were  vague  enough  at  first  and  rather  mur- 
mured than  spoken,  accompanied  by  gestures 
gently  persuasive.  By  little  and  little,  and  with 
infinite  precaution  and  delicacy,  this  speech  be- 
came more  definite  and  connected ;  it  wove  about 
one's  being  a  thousand  little  tangible  and  intangi- 
ble bonds,  a  fine  and  delicate  cobweb  for  the  heart, 
in  which  the  heart  very  soon  was  beating  warm. 
That  is  the  way  he  employed  strategy ;  but  what  I 
cannot  express  in  words  was  the  spontaneity  and 
irresistible  grace  of  his  manoeuvres,  half  methodi- 
cal, half  inexplicable,  the  net  result  of  which  was 
the  solace  of  unhappiness. 

He  expected  silence  to  do  a  great  deal ;  in  this 
silence  the  last  words  he  had  uttered  vibrated  and 


4  Alphonse  Daudet. 

thus  grew  in  grandeur.  I  can  still  see  certain 
people  standing  erect  before  his  table  with  moist 
eyes  and  trembling  hands.  I  can  see  others  seated, 
turning  toward  him  with  a  movement  of  thanks, 
astonished  by  so  much  wisdom  as  his.  I  can  see 
the  frightened  ones  and  the  stutterers,  to  whom  he 
knew  how  to  give  confidence  by  means  of  a  smile. 
Or  else,  while  waiting  for  the  result  of  his  counsel, 
he  would  pretend  to  look  up  a  piece  of  paper  or 
his  pen,  his  pipe  or  his  eye-glass,  somewhere  about 
his  always  cluttered  table. 

A  depositary  of  so  many  confidences  and  se- 
crets, my  father  kept  them  to  himself;  he  has 
carried  them  with  him  into  his  tomb  ;  very  often  I 
guessed  at  certain  things,  but  when  I  put  him 
questions,  he  gently  evaded  me  and  teased  me  for 
my  curiosity. 

Far,  far  back,  at  the  very  beginning  of  my 
youngest  childhood,  I  can  perceive  the  kindness 
of  my  father.  That  kindness  shows  itself  in 
caresses,  he  draws  me  close  to  him,  he  tells  me 
wonderful  stories,  we  walk  together  through  the 
streets  of  Paris  and  everything  seems  to  have  the 
appearance  of  a  festival.  I  perceive  the  warmth 
of  the  sun  and  then  another  warmth,  softer  and 
nearer  to  me,  which  is  transmitted  by  the  dear, 
strong  hand.  In  my  narrow  little  breast  I  feel 
something  tangible  and  exquisite,  for  the  sake 
of  which  my  breathing  is  quicker,  something 
which  I  have  already  learned  to  call  happiness^ 
and  as  I  walk  along  I  repeat  to  myself  /  am  very 
happy  to-day.     My  father  talks  to  me ;  for  me  he 


Last  Moments.  5 

has  neither  features  nor  face;  he  is  not  a  mar- 
vellous man,  but  just  simply  my  father.  I  often 
call  him  Papa,  Papa,  just  for  the  simple  pleasure 
which  that  word  gives  me,  because  attached  to  it 
seem  all  the  germs  of  brilliant  and  noteworthy  ideas. 
I  ask  him  questions  about  everything  around  us,  in 
order  to  hear  the  sound  of  his  voice,  which  appears 
to  me  like  the  most  beautiful  music  and  seems  to 
sound  in  exact  accord  with  the  happiness  and 
brilliancy  of  all  my  hopes. 

We  pass  through  squares  full  of  people  and 
enter  grand  mansions;  those  who  greet  us  are 
jovial  and  Papa  always  makes  them  laugh.  I  am 
wonderfully  quick  to  perceive  that  there  is  some- 
thing in  him  which  is  greater  than  that  which  exists 
in  others.  They  turn  toward  him,  they  address 
themselves  to  him. 

We  are  in  the  working-room,  he,  my  mother, 
and  I ;  at  that  time  we  inhabited  the  old  Hotel 
Lamoignon,  24  Pavee  Street  in  the  Marais ;  this 
time  there  is  sunshine,  too,  in  the  shape  of  a  big 
yellow  streak  which  lengthens  the  designs  of  the 
carpet,  a  streak  which  I  insist  upon  trying  to  polish 
by  rubbing  it  with  my  hand.  My  mother  is  seated 
and  writes;  my  father  also  writes,  but  standing 
up,  using  a  little  plank  screwed  to  the  wall.  Now 
and  then  he  stops,  turns  about  and  puts  a  question 
to  my  mother.  From  the  way  in  which  they  look 
at  each  other  I  divine  that  they  are  very  happy. 
Now  and  then  he  quits  his  place,  strolls  up  and 
down  with  long  steps,  repeating  in  a  low  tone 
phrases  which  I  know  are  his  "  work." 


6  Alpkonse  Daudet. 

These  conversations  of  my  father  with  himself 
when  he  "  plunges  into  work,"  form  part  of  my 
childhood's  atmosphere.  This  expression  of  plung- 
ing into  work  often  makes  me  pensive,  but  the 
most  violent  labor  does  not  prevent  him  from  rais- 
ing me  in  his  arms  when  he  passes  near  me,  or  of 
kissing  me,  or  of  standing  me  upright  on  an  arm- 
chair or  on  a  table,  —  a  dangerous  but  delightful 
exercise,  during  which  I  feel  perfect  confidence 
as  to  his  strength. 

Of  all  my  comrades  he  it  is  who  knows  how  to 
play  the  best.  In  a  corner  we  have  a  great  mass 
of  paper  balls,  in  order  to  have  a  snowball  fight; 
we  have  a  corner  of  the  drawing-room  where  two 
armchairs  placed  together  form  an  actual  cabin, 
in  which  we  do  not  fear  the  attacks  of  savages  and 
where  all  the  fruits  of  the  Fortunate  Isles  grow  in 
abundance.  When  winter's  cold  groups  us  about 
the  fire,  Robinson  Crusoe's  shelter  is  between  the 
thin  knees  of  my  father;  as  to  the  roof  of  the 
cabin,  that  is  his  inevitable  laprug  which  has  been 
known  to  take  on  the  strangest  forms  and  reach 
the  most  unexpected  destinations.  The  situation 
in  my  mind  is  twofold  ;  I  know  perfectly  well  that 
my  father  draws  on  his  fancy  and  holds  the  thread 
of  the  plot ;  nevertheless  I  believe  in  my  own  role 
and  I  inhabit  with  him  a  lonely  country  which  a 
very  terrifying  conflagration  ever  lights  up. 

Here  is  a  painful  matter :  later,  very  much 
later,  it  must  be  a  year  and  a  half  ago,  when  I 
had  that  typhoid  fever  and  my  father  watched  me 
every  night;  my  vague  and  floating  brain  revived 


Last  Moments.  7 

those  distant  remembrances.  As  in  the  case  of 
a  weakened  convalescent,  my  memory  went  back 
to  pluck  these  flowers  of  my  extreme  youth.  I 
trod  again  the  pathway  of  the  heaped-up  years 
and  with  an  inexpressible  tenderness  looked  upon 
the  handsome  face  of  my  beloved,  turned  toward 
me  under  the  rays  of  the  lamp ;  he  did  not  seem 
to  be  changed  at  all. 

Often,  as  he  recalled  it  to  me  later,  were  our 
walks  in  the  fields  of  Champrosay,  roads  given 
over  to  filial  love,  roads  of  my  heart !  At  that 
time  I  was  hardly  four  years  old  and  my  father 
held  me  by  the  hand.  I  had  an  idea  that  I  was 
leading  him  and  constantly  called  out  "  Look  out, 
Papa,  beware  of  the  little  stones  !  " 

Since  that  time,  O  Destiny,  he  has  had  need  of 
my  grown  man's  arm  !  We  passed  again  over  the 
same  paths,  becoming  gently  melancholy  the  while. 
We  called  back  again  those  fragile  hours  in  the 
meadows  and  autumnal  plains,  the  splendor  of 
which  he  would  celebrate  in  familiar  brief  phrases, 
and  once  more  in  the  footpaths  among  the  broom 
and  common  herbs  the  past  touched  the  present. 
Our  silence  was  filled  with  regret,  for  we  had 
formed  the  most  beautiful  dreams  of  trips  together, 
travels  on  foot  yielding  all  the  emotions  and  all 
the  surprises  which  my  friend  knew  how  to  ex- 
tract from  the  slightest  episodes ;  but  his  malady 
made  all  these  things  impossible  ! 

**  Do  you  know,  Leon,  under  what  guise  the 
roads  appear  to  me?  As  escapes  from  my  pain! 
O,  to  flee  away  and  disappear  behind  a  bend  of  the 


8  Alphonse  Daudet, 

road !  How  beautiful  they  are,  those  long  pink 
turnpikes  of  France  which  I  would  have  so  liked 
to  tread  with  you  and  your  brother !  "  He  raised 
his  black  eyes  with  a  great  sigh,  and  I  felt  my  love 
for  him  augmented  by  an  immense  pity. 

At  the  end  of  my  childhood  my  father  stands 
before  me  proud  and  valiant  and  ready  for  his 
growing  fame.  I  know  that  he  writes  fine  books, 
for  his  friends  compliment  him  about  them,  his  big 
friends  whom  I  call  the  giants,  who  come  to  dine 
in  the  house  —  M.  Flaubert,  M.  de  Goncourt !  I 
am  very  fond  of  M.  Flaubert;  he  kisses  me  with  a 
loud  laugh.  He  speaks  in  a  very  high  voice  and 
a  very  strong  one,  while  he  beats  with  his  fists 
upon  the  table. 

When  they  are  gone  we  talk  about  them  with 
admiration. 

Then  my  education  begins ;  my  father  and 
mother  undertake  it  all ;  I  shall  talk  about  this 
later.     At  present  simply  a  few  recollections : 

We  are  in  the  country  in  Provence  at  the  house 
of  a  friend.  On  a  delightful  morning  filled  with 
fragrances  and  the  hum  of  bees  my  companion 
takes  his  copy  of  Virgil,  his  lap-rug  and  his  short 
pipe.  We  settle  down  on  the  brink  of  a  river ;  the 
horizon,  where  lines  of  gold  and  rose  are  trem- 
bling, is  of  a  divine  purity  and  is  heightened  by  the 
slender  dark  cypresses.  My  father  explains  the 
Georgics  to  me.  Thus  does  poetry  show  itself  to 
me !  All  of  a  sudden,  at  a  single  stroke,  the 
beauty  of  the  verses  and  the  rhythm  of  the  singing 
voice  and  the  harmony  of  the  landscape  —  pene- 


Last  Moments.  9 

trate  my  heart.  An  immense  beatitude  invades 
me,  I  feel  myself  ready  to  weep,  and  as  he  knows 
what  is  passing  within  me,  he  draws  me  to  his 
breast,  increases  the  charm  and  shares  in  my 
enthusiasm ;    I  am  fairly  drunk  with  beauty. 

This  time  it  is  the  evening.  I  come  back  from 
college  after  several  courses  in  philosophy:  with 
incomparable  power  Burdeau,  our  master,  has  just 
been  analyzing  Schopenhauer  for  us.  Gloomy 
images  have  torn  my  soul;  positively,  in  that 
lecture  I  have  eaten  of  the  fruit  of  death  and  pain. 
Through  what  disproportion  of  things  have  the 
words  of  that  sombre  thinker  completely  con- 
quered me  and  won  such  an  actual  power  in  my 
impressionable  brain?  My  father  understands  my 
terror ;  I  hardly  say  a  word  to  him,  but  he  sees 
something  has  been  born  within  my  look  which 
is  too  hard  for  a  growing  boy.  Then  he  goes 
about  it  as  before.  He  approaches  me  tenderly 
and  he  who  is  already  filled  with  sombre  presages 
about  himself  celebrates  for  my  sake  the  glory  of 
life  in  unforgettable  terms. 

He  talks  of  labor  that  ennobles  everything ;  of 
goodness  radiating  happiness ;  of  the  sense  of  pity 
which  provides  an  asylum  for  the  sad ;  finally  of 
love,  the  only  consoler  for  death,  love,  which  I 
only  knew  by  name,  but  which  was  soon  to  be 
revealed  to  me  and  was  to  overwhelm  me  with 
happiness.  How  strong  and  pressing  are  his 
words  !  He  makes  a  radiant  picture  of  that  life  on 
which  I  am  embarking.  Before  his  eloquence  the 
arguments  of  the  philosopher  fall  one  by  one ;  he 


lO  Alphonse  Daudet. 

repulses  triumphantly  this  first  and  decided  attack 
of  metaphysics. 

Do  not  smile,  ye  who  read  me ;  to-day  I  under- 
stand the  importance  of  that  little  family  drama. 
Since  that  unforgettable  evening  I  have  gorged 
myself  with  metaphysics  and  I  know  that  in  that 
way  a  subtle  poison  has  slipped  into  my  brain  as 
into  those  of  my  contemporaries.  It  is  not 
through  its  pessimism  that  this  philosophy  is 
perilous,  but  because  it  carries  people  aside  from 
life  and  overwhelms  humanity  in  us.  Bitterly  do  I 
regret  that  I  did  not  jot  down  the  lecture  my  father 
gave ;  it  would  have  been  in  many  ways  a  great 
comfort. 

Thus  I  reach  the  final  years,  only  stopping  at 
the  brighter  points  of  that  life  of  filial  piety  on 
which  my  whole  being  depends.  If  I  speak  of 
myself,  still  it  is  always  he  round  whom  the  matter 
runs,  because  I  was  his  field  of  trial  —  a  field,  alas, 
very  often  ungrateful  and  without  a  harvest. 

My  father  would  have  liked  me  to  have  entered 
the  literary  career  in  the  line  of  instruction.  It 
seemed  to  him  that  the  finest  of  all  duties  was  the 
education  of  young  minds  to  the  point  of  under- 
standing ideas,  following  them  step  by  step,  form- 
ing in  them  a  character  and  developing  in  them 
the  power  of  feeling.  He  admired  all  those  in  our 
epoch  who  have,  as  he  was  wont  to  say  "  taken 
charge  of  souls,"  and  he  showed  a  sympathy  and 
respect  to  my  masters  at  Louis  le  Grand  College 
which  most  of  them  unquestionably  will  recall. 
By  what  way  and  wherefore  did   destiny  at  first 


Last  Moments.  ii 

drag  me  toward  medicine?  That  is  something  of 
which  I  shall  speak  in  another  place.  His  own 
maladies  and  the  visits  of  celebrated  doctors 
unquestionably  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  it,  so 
impressionable  is  youth ! 

But  the  very  day  on  which  that  career  repulsed 
me,  the  day  I  grew  disgusted  with  the  charnel 
house,  its  examinations  and  its  competitions,  he 
respected  my  evolution.  My  first  literary  essays, 
which  I  read  to  him  at  the  Baths  of  Lamalou, 
were  resolutely  encouraged  by  him ;  and  from  that 
very  moment,  entering  into  the  estate  on  which  he 
planted  and  caused  to  grow  such  magnificent  trees, 
I  profited  every  day  by  his  counsel  and  experience. 

In  the  rare  old  copy  of  Montaigne  that  never 
left  him,  which  carries  on  its  yellow  and  green 
pages  the  traces  of  visits  to  many  a  noted  thermal 
bath  —  in  this  book  wherein  he  found  every  kind 
of  instruction  and  every  sort  of  comfort,  I  find 
that  famous  chapter  on  The  Resemblance  of  Chil- 
dren to  Their  Fathers  marked  and  annotated  with 
special  care.  Unquestionably,  he  had  realized 
for  several  years  past  that  there  had  been  roused 
in  me,  and  almost  without  my  knowledge,  that 
strange  literary  demon  from  whom  it  is  not  possible 
to  escape. 

When  I  confessed  to  him  this  new  zeal  which 
had  filled  me,  he  gave  me  a  fine  lecture  which  I 
remember  perfectly.  It  took  place  in  a  vulgar  and 
bare  hotel  room ;  by  some  unusual  chance  my 
mother  had  been  forced  to  stay  in  Paris  with  my 
brother  Lucien  and    my  sister    Edmee  who  was 


12  Alphonse  Daudet. 

then  very  young.  He  spoke  to  me  with  a  gravity 
full  of  emotion,  coming  after  his  usual  manner  very 
near  to  my  heart  and  my  intelligence.  He  repre- 
sented to  me  the  troubles  of  the  profession  of  a 
man-of-letters,  in  which  no  one  has  a  right  to  be 
an  artist  in  the  highest  sense,  because  one  remains 
always  responsible  for  those  who,  reading  one's 
books,  might  be  troubled  in  mind  thereby.  He 
did  not  conceal  from  me  the  many  and  varied  dif- 
ficulties which  I  would  meet  upon  my  way  —  even 
admitting  that  success  would  favor  me,  "  which  is 
very  rare  !  "  To  this  he  added  some  very  simple 
rules,  but  so  true  !  — rules  for  sincerity  and  effect  in 
style,  the  part  played  by  observation  and  imagina- 
tion, the  building  up  of  a  work,  its  method,  and 
the  relief  to  be  given  therein  to  the  actors  and 
their  temperaments. 

I  listened  in  a  religious  spirit.  Well  I  under- 
stood that  he  was  pouring  forth  to  me,  there,  the 
accumulated  result  of  his  hard  work  and  the  finest 
crystallization  of  his  mind.  At  about  that  time 
we  were  in  the  habit  of  reading  Pascal  of  an  even- 
ing in  a  loud  voice  from  chamber  to  chamber  and 
from  bed  to  bed.  He  presented  this  sublime  mas- 
ter of  style  to  me  along  with  his  beloved  Mon- 
taigne, not  as  if  he  were  too  lofty  an  example,  but 
like  a  constant  stimulus.  He  also  spoke  to  me  of 
his  own  sufferings,  but  in  a  manner  almost  like  that 
of  a  philosopher  in  order  not  to  make  me  sad ; 
and  he  insinuated  that,  for  a  number  of  souls  who 
have  not  expressed  themselves,  literature  was  a 
solace    and    relief,  such  persons    finding    in  it   a 


Last  Moments.  13 

mirror  and  a  guide.  He  showed  me  the  near- 
est examples  in  Flaubert  and  the  de  Goncourt 
brothers.  He  closed  with  a  eulogy  upon  life  in  all 
its  forms,  even  the  most  painful. 

The  light  was  failing,  but  still  lit  up  his  proud 
and  delicate  face.  Filled  with  a  sort  of  holy  con- 
fidence, I  traced  his  words  back  to  their  original 
meaning,  back  to  those  deep  motives  concerning 
which  he  was  silent.  Between  us  two  there  was 
some  happiness  but  a  great  deal  of  anxiety.  As  I 
evoke  them,  I  make  them  live  again,  decisive 
hours  that  they  were ! 

From  that  day  onward  till  his  last  hour  he  never 
ceased  to  counsel  and  instruct  and  guide  me ;  we 
got  in  the  habit  of  such  a  way  of  talk  that  I  was 
able  to  translate  his  silences,  so  that  a  single  word 
from  him  was  equivalent  to  long  phrases.  From 
that  time  forth,  without  a  variation  or  truce,  he  was 
my  impartial  and  tender  critic. 

During  his  last  years  the  fear  of  losing  him  grew 
upon  me,  but  owing  to  that  sorrowful  privilege  of 
mine  it  made  me  attentive  to  his  slightest  word. 
That  has  made  it  possible  for  me  to  write  this 
book.  I  lived  as  it  were  in  a  cave  where  shone  a 
perpetual  flame ;  our  garden  at  Champrosay  and 
his  working  room  are  crammed  with  the  memories 
of  conversations  in  which  I  limited  myself  to  ques- 
tions concerning  all  the  great  problems  of  human- 
ity. I  shall  try  to  give  some  idea  of  his  curt, 
elliptical  and  picturesque  language,  which  really 
approached  a  human  look,  owing  to  its  intensity, 
rapidity  and  the  crowding  of  images.     Of  a  surety 


14  Alphonse  Daudet. 

the  novelist  was  a  power  and  the  future  will  show 
him  to  have  been  one  still  more  ;  but  the  man 
behind  the  novelist  had  not  his  equal  for  the  treas- 
ures of  experience  and  truth,  which,  like  minted 
money,  he  poured  forth  from  dawn  to  night. 

His  friends  knew  his  power  of  divination  well ; 
he  analyzed  the  most  distant  and  varied  events 
with  an  almost  infallible  acuteness.  His  rare  mis- 
takes became  for  him  so  many  causes  for  new 
observations  of  himself  His  pitying,  charitable 
nature  was  lightened  by  playful  and  ironical  phrases 
in  which  tears  seemed  to  mix  with  smiles.  At  our 
family  table  in  the  presence  of  my  grandmother, 
whom  he  adored,  his  wife,  whom  he  loved  more 
than  anything  else,  his  baby  daughter  and  two 
sons  —  at  our  delightful  table  which  his  departure 
has  left  so  empty  and  silent,  he  took  as  much 
trouble  in  conversation  as  he  would  at  a  reunion  of 
his  friends. 

There  indeed  it  was  that  death  came  to  seize  him 
on  the  i6th  of  December,  1 897.  It  was  during  din- 
ner. I  had  come  in  somewhat  late  and  found  our 
little  family  met  together  as  was  usual  in  his  work- 
ing-room. I  gave  him  my  arm  into  the  dining- 
room  and  seated  him  in  his  big  armchair.  Whilst 
taking  his  soup,  he  began  to  converse ;  neither  in 
his  movements  nor  his  way  of  acting  was  there  any- 
thing to  announce  such  a  disaster ;  when,  all  of  a 
sudden,  during  a  short  and  terrible  silence,  I  heard 
that  frightful  noise  which  one  never  forgets  —  a 
veiled  rattle  in  the  throat  followed  by  another  rattle. 
As  my  mother  cried  out  we  rushed  toward  him. 


Last  Moments. 


15 


He  had  thrown  his  head  backward ;  that  beautiful 
head  of  his  was  already  covered  with  an  icy  sweat 
and  his  arms  were  hanging  inert  along  his  body. 

With  infinite  precautions  my  brother  and  I  lifted 
him  up  and  laid  him  on  the  carpet;  in  one  second, 
behold  the  horror  of  death  fallen  upon  our  un- 
happy house !  Ah,  the  groans  and  lamentations 
and  all  the  useless  prayers  addressed  to  one  who 
had  known  how  to  give  us  everything,  except  just 
one  little  bit  more  of  himself!  The  doctors  came 
quickly.  Dr.  Potain,  who  loved  him,  tried  every- 
thing possible  and  impossible.  O  frightful  and 
heart-rending  spectacle  of  the  body  which  had 
given  life  to  us  and  from  which  life  had  fled  in  a 
lightning  flash  !  So  much  kindness,  gentleness  and 
beauty,  so  much  sympathy,  so  many  generous 
enthusiasms,  all  are  nothing  more  than  a  remem- 
brance for  us ! 

An  hour  later,  amid  repressed  sobs,  he  lies  upon 
his  bed  as  beautiful  in  the  motionless  gleam  of  the 
candles  as  his  image  in  my  heart.  The  bonds 
which  attach  us  to  him  shall  be  broken  only  by 
our  death,  but  now  they  are  being  lost  in  the 
darkness.  Our  memories  have  become  the  tombs 
where  lie  his  motions  and  his  words,  his  looks  and 
his  tender  deeds.  Here  below  love  will  keep  no 
one  from  that  path.  Virtue  keeps  no  one,  genius 
keeps  no  one  back.  But  as,  broken  and  despair- 
ing, I  bent  over  his  most  pure  and  lovely  brow,  it 
seemed  to  me  that  I  heard  these  words:  "Be  of 
good  cheer,  the  example  remains !  " 


II. 

LIFE   AND   LITERATURE. 

My  father  never  separated  life  from  literature ; 
that  was  the  secret  of  his  influence.  In  his  view 
art  was  accomplishment.  To  create  types  of  hu- 
manity and  free  the  souls  of  men,  that  before  all 
else  is  what  he  longed  to  do. 

Many  a  time  has  he  told  me  how  his  youth  was 
devoured  by  that  same  love  of  life  and  how  it  was 
due  to  my  mother,  "  his  devoted,  his  sweet  and 
tireless  comrade  in  work,"  that  he  did  not  fool- 
ishly dissipate  those  gifts  received  from  nature 
which  at  a  later  moment  he  employed  in  such  a 
splendid  way.  He  hardly  thought  of  fame  for  a 
moment  and  let  the  important  question  of  the 
future  which  awaits  the  works  of  dead  men  stand 
aside  unquestioned. 

One  day  I  read  him  a  sentence  by  Lamartine 
from  the  Cours  de  Litt^ratiire  which  struck  him ; 
he  asked  me  to  repeat  it,  as  he  usually  did  when 
sowing  new  seeds  in  his  memory.  The  poet 
speaks  of  "  that  marvellous  shiver  of  sensibility,  a 
forecast  of  genius,  if  the  genius  do  not  come  to 
shipwreck  from  the  passions.^'  That  shiver  of  sen- 
sibility was  considered  by  my  father  the  source  of 
every  work  which  was  to  last. 


Life  and  Literature.  17 

In  certain  obituary  articles,  otherwise  very  well 
meant,  I  have  read  this  sentence,  which  has  caused 
me  to  smile  :  "  Alphonse  Daudet  was  not  a  thinker." 

No,  certainly  he  was  not  and  never  was  a  thinker 
in  pedantic  fashion,  a  maker  of  abstractions  and  a 
juggler  with  obscure  phrases ;  that  he  was  not ! 

But  here  on  my  table  I  have  his  books  of  notes 
where,  every  day,  without  wearying  and  with  an 
incredible  scrupulousness  and  patience,  he  wrote 
down  the  incessant  workings  of  his  brain.  Every 
sort  of  thing  is  found  here  in  these  little  books 
bound  in  black  moleskin,  all  their  pages  rumpled, 
scratched  and  scribbled  up  and  down  and  from  side 
to  side. 

At  first  one  gets  the  impression  of  a  tumult  and 
a  buzzing,  a  kind  of  regular  trembling.  That  fine 
mind,  I  fancy,  is  completely  awake  in  those  notes, 
awake  with  all  its  revulsions  and  whirlwind  changes, 
its  comings  and  goings,  its  quick-dying  flames  and 
its  fiery  spaces. 

Then,  after  a  great  deal  of  attention,  I  pick  out  a 
kind  of  rhythm,  the  harmonious  movement  of  his 
mind  which  had  its  origin  in  feeling ;  it  multiplies 
itself,  inspires  itself  with  picturesque  views,  visions 
of  travel,  dreams  and  reminiscences,  and  traverses 
those  colored  and  rosy  regions  where  the  miracle 
of  art  takes  place ;  where  through  the  mystery  of 
birth  a  vivid  impression  becomes  the  starting-point 
for  a  book  or  an  essay. 

Then  the  tone  rises;  it  remains  living  and 
clear,  but  becomes  more  precise  and  closely  set; 
phrases   crammed  with   experience   of  the  world 


1 8  Alphonse  Daudet. 

appear  placed  side  by  side,  without  apparent 
bonds.  Nevertheless  they  appear  to  belong  to- 
gether like  colors  and  brush  strokes  in  some  sketch 
by  Velasquez  or  Rembrandt,  phrases  which  contain 
a  realism  that  is  sometimes  cruel  and  as  if  shudder- 
ing with  anguish  and  sincerity,  phrases  which,  like 
countenances  modelled  by  the  heart  and  the  senses 
of  man,  arouse  innumerable  reflections. 

And  in  this  abridged  way  and  from  this  vibrat- 
ing cohesion  and  out  of  this  tissue  of  flesh  and 
nerves  spring  astonishing  formulas,  brilliant  wit- 
nesses to  his  own  soul,  in  generalizations  far 
grander  than  those  detached  ideas  of  the  human 
mind  in  which  metaphysics  lose  themselves. 

To  sum  up  in  a  word,  this  perpetual  work  of 
analysis,  done  with  a  sincerity  which  reaches  the 
verge  of  crying  aloud,  reveals  in  the  author's 
thought  a  constant  ascension  and  purification ;  it 
shows  a  zeal  to  carry  the  torch  into  the  fogs  and 
cobwebby  corners  of  the  human  spirit  and  it  ex- 
hibits, as  it  were,  a  patience  pushed  to  the  ideal 
point. 

There  is  more  than  passion  alone,  there  is  also 
the  spirit  of  sacrifice.  Sometimes  I  used  to  say 
laughingly  to  my  father :  "  How  you  do  derive 
from  the  Catholic  blood  !  "  At  the  last  analysis 
these  notebooks  reveal  to  us  a  soul  in  a  complete 
state  of  sensitiveness  where  without  doubt  dogma 
has  been  obscured,  but  where  religion  has  left  its 
imprint  on  whatsoever  religion  offers  that  is  at 
once  touching  and  implacable.  He  is  certain  to 
examine  himself  without  cessation.     He  is  sure  to 


Life  and  Literature.  19 

write  down  without  delay  whatsoever  people  have 
felt,  whatsoever  people  have  suffered.  The  joys 
of  life  and  of  death,  the  slow  crumbling  of  our 
tissues,  the  unfolding  of  our  hopes  and  disillusions 
are  a  terror  for  the  greater  part  of  mankind ;  but 
the  last  and  greatest  terror  is  ourselves.  This  terror 
it  is,  this  secret  need  of  paltering  with  our  con- 
science which  makes  somnambulists  of  us  and 
causes  us  to  hesitate  before  the  confession  which 
our  heart  makes  to  our  heart  through  the  long 
silence  of  the  nights  and  days,  even  as  we  carry  on 
our  unseen  and  obscure  existence  ! 

The  most  powerful  souls  remain  children  rocked 
in  the  cradle  of  an  ignorance  which  they  voluntarily 
render  denser  and  deeper,  an  ignorance  which  they 
keep  tongueless  and  dark  with  shadows. 

Montaigne,  Pascal  and  Rousseau  were  the  three 
chief  and  violent  admirations  of  my  father.  He 
himself  was  a  member  of  that  mighty  family.  He 
was  never  without  his  Montaigne.  He  annotated 
Pascal  and  defended  Rousseau  against  the  honor- 
able reproaches  of  those  who  are  ashamed  of 
shameful  deeds  and  turn  aside  in  disgust  from 
things  of  the  flesh.  Without  a  moment's  rest  he 
entered  into  the  abodes  of  these  powerful  mod- 
els, wandered  through  their  crypts  and  pondered 
over  those  redoubtable  silences  which  lie  between 
their  confessions.  He  took  to  himself  one  of  their 
thoughts  and  lived  with  it  as  with  a  lady-love,  or 
some  forgotten  sister  whose  resemblances  and  dis- 
similar traits  he  was  examining  —  all  with  that 
scrupulous  earnestness  which  he  brought  to  bear 


20  Alphonse  Daudet 

upon  matters  of  feeling.  He  put  questions  to 
the  people  about  him,  or  to  those  who  are  on  the 
wing,  and  even  to  the  facts  which  happen  every  day. 
He  loved  the  sincerity  of  those  three  geniuses,  so 
ripe  and  so  vast  and  so  big.  He  proposed  them 
as  examples  for  himself  He  was  thoroughly  satu- 
rated with  their  substance  through  having  con- 
versed with  them  so  long.  Was  not  that  the  work 
of  a  thinker? 

Well,  of  all  the  great  books  that  lie  open,  that 
one  which  he  studied  more  than  any  other  was  the 
book  of  life.  Impressionable  as  we  know  him  to 
be,  his  youthful  days  must  have  been  extraordina- 
rily crowded  with  sensations  and  things  of  all  kinds 
that  attack  the  nerves,  things  which  he  was  able 
to  classify  in  his  old  age.  But  here  is  one  of  his 
most  surprising  characteristics :  maturity  did  not 
show  itself  in  his  case  either  as  a  drying-up  or  a 
stoppage  of  development;  to  the  very  end  of  his 
life,  and  only  through  suffering,  he  preserved  intact 
the  faculty  of  being  moved. 

In  our  talks  we  used  to  compare  that  precious 
and  most  rare  faculty  to  a  constant  sore  on  the 
spot  through  which  force  circulates,  flooding  over 
from  the  human  being  to  nature  and  rising  from 
nature  to  the  human  being.  I  remember  that  he 
likened  it  to  the  wound  given  by  the  Holy  Spear 
that  pierced  the  side  of  Christ. 

"  Listen,"  said  he  to  me  one  day,  "  listen  to  one 
of  my  visions  !  Our  Lord  hangs  on  the  cross  ;  it  is 
dawn,  a  cold  and  biting  dawn.  There  is  the  martyr 
so  in  love  with  life  that  he  is  willincf  to  lose  it  after 


Life  and  Literature.  21 

it  has  poured  forth  upon  every  one  its  charity  and 
redemption,  and  toward  the  Master  are  rising  the 
sounds  of  the  city  which  is  awaking  to  a  new  day  — 
sounds  and  odors  from  perfumes  and  from  kitchen 
hearths,  noises  of  mighty  crowds  ;  and  then,  much 
nearer,  the  groans  and  long  lamentations  at  the  foot 
of  the  cross.  He  drinks  this  all  in  through  every 
pore  and  the  taste  of  the  vinegar  becomes  less 
bitter  whilst  the  torture  of  the  nails,  of  the  cruci- 
fixion and  of  the  lance  wound  becomes  less 
keen.  .  .  ." 

He  went  no  farther,  but  he  laid  a  certain  weight 
upon  the  last  words,  so  that  I  might  follow  him  on 
to  the  sequel.  He  did  not  insist  upon  particulars 
in  these  beautiful  dreams,  but  left  the  care  of  com- 
pleting them  to  his  listener,  knowing  that  he  who 
adds  a  little  of  himself  understands  better  than  if 
he  be  told  all. 

This  delicacy  of  feeling,  often  so  acute  that  it 
reached  the  point  of  the  inexpressible,  remained 
perfectly  straightforward  notwithstanding,  and  never 
attacked  the  right  and  proper  rule.  That  rule, 
which  was  perfectly  simple  and  lucid,  remained  in 
him  as  a  boundary  not  to  be  transcended.  My 
father  detested  the  "  perversity  "  of  certain  minds, 
those  unwholesome  games  played  with  the  con- 
science in  which  it  has  pleased  certain  remarkable 
men  to  indulge. 

This  delicacy  of  feeling  was  alway  on  the  alert. 
In  his  little  note-books  he  talks  of  the  hours  with- 
out grace,  in  which  the  priest  finds  that  his  faith 
has  left  him,  or  in  which  the  lover,  horrified  by  the 


2  2  Alp  house  Daudet. 

discovery,  questions  himself  concerning  the  depth 
of  his  love.  One  of  his  preoccupations  was  never 
to  harden  himself  in  pain,  but  to  remain  accessible 
to  all  the  emotions.  For  my  part  I  have  never 
known  him  to  have  any  hours  "  without  grace." 

In  telling  a  story  he  had  a  way  which  belonged 
to  him  alone,  one  his  friends  will  never  forget, 
nor  indeed  others  who  merely  heard  him  once. 
The  description  followed  close  upon  his  memory 
of  the  affair  and  adapted  itself  to  it  like  a  wet 
garment.  In  their  proper  order  he  reproduced 
the  facts  and  sensations  necessary  to  the  story, 
suppressing  the  intermediate  ones  and  leaving,  as 
he  was  wont  to  say,  only  "  the  dominant  ones." 

"The  dominant  ones"  —  that  word  was  always 
on  his  lips.  By  that  he  understood  the  essential 
and  indispensable  parts,  the  pinnacles  of  the  book 
or  the  novel.  "  It  is  on  these  points,"  he  used  to 
add,  "  that  it  is  necessary  to  let  the  light 
play." 

He  used  also  to  repeat :  "  Things  have  a  sense 
and  a  side  by  which  they  can  be  grasped,"  and  in 
that  vague  term  "  things  "  he  understood  what  is 
animate  as  well  as  what  is  inanimate,  whatever 
moves  and  expresses  itself,  as  well  as  whatever 
agitates  or  weighs  itself 

In  that  way  we  penetrate  the  secret  of  his  simple 
method  which  at  first  blush  seems  by  no  means 
simple  and  indeed  is  one  which  demands  in  a 
writer  those  natural  gifts  that  were  his. 

A  lover  of  real  things  and  of  truth,  he  never 
ceased  that  search  of  his.     As  long  as  he  was  able 


Life  and  Literature.  23 

to  leave  the  house  he  went  about  in  the  greatest 
variety  of  places,  never  neglecting  a  chance  and 
particularly  never  despising  any  human  being. 
Most  remarkable  was  it  how  he  detested  disdain 
as  one  of  the  forms  of  ignorance.  Whether  the 
person  in  question  was  a  clubman  in  the  drawing- 
room,  or  an  artist,  or  a  sick  man,  whether  it  was  a 
pauper  on  the  turnpike,  or  a  forester,  or  a  passer- 
by, or  some  w^orkman  met  by  chance,  my  father 
took  advantage  of  his  own  prodigious  turn  for 
sociability  or  of  his  charmingly  delicate  kindness 
in  order  to  break  through  that  vulgar  region  where 
only  hypocrisies  are  exchanged,  thus  penetrating 
to  the  soul  of  the  person. 

He  inspired  in  people  that  extraordinary  con- 
fidence which  springs  from  the  delight  of  being 
understood  and  is  doubled  in  pleasure  by  compas- 
sion ;  and  that  compassion  was  not  a  role  assumed 
for  effect.  I  have  seen  very  different  kinds  of 
people  surrender  their  confidence  to  him  with 
rapture.  How  many  people  suffer  from  recoil ! 
How  many  people  feel  themselves  quite  alone 
upon  the  earth,  finding  everywhere  nothing  but 
misfortune ! 

I  have  used  the  word  method ;  it  has  a  false 
sound  when  applied  to  activity  like  his  which  is  so 
human.  Before  everything  else  my  father  followed 
his  own  inclination,  which  was  that  of  loving  his 
neighbor  and  sorrowing  and  rejoicing  with  him. 
My  mother,  my  brother  and  myself  indulged  in 
tender  pleasantries  over  the  wrath  which  boiled 
up  in  him  on  hearing  of  some  act  of  injustice,  or 


24  Alphonse  Daudef. 

over  the  personal  interest  which  he  took  in  affairs 
as  far  as  possible  separated  from  him. 

When  a  cruel  malady  drew  limits  to  his  earlier 
modes  of  life  —  limits  in  a  certain  way  less  griev- 
ous, it  is  true,  than  people  have  stated  —  he  opened 
his  portals  wide.  He  welcomed  all  misfortunes 
and  listened  patiently  to  the  recital  of  every  kind 
of  distress.  Never  did  one  hear  him  complain  of 
having  his  work  interrupted  in  order  to  soothe  an 
actual  pain.  Very  few  people  duped  or  abused  his 
confidence,  for  he  knew  how  to  uncover  lies  with 
extraordinary  sagacity;  but  even  that  did  not 
irritate  him :  "  The  poor  wretch,"  he  often  said  to 
us  with  his  delightful  smile,  "  the  poor  wretch 
thought  that  he  was  deceiving  me;  but  I  read 
falsehood  on  his  face  and  divined  it  from  the  trem- 
bling of  a  little  muscle  down  there  in  the  corner  of 
the  mouth  which  I  know  very  well ;  it  was  made 
known  to  me  also  by  the  '  winkiness '  of  his  eyes ; 
there  was  a  moment  when  I  was  on  the  point  of 
betraying  myself  Pshaw  !  he  's  an  unhappy  crea- 
ture all  the  same." 

When  the  man  was  gone  he  would  note  down 
whatever  in  the  conversation  seemed  to  him  pecu- 
liar and  worthy  of  memory.  And  his  memory, 
besides,  was  infinite,  for,  notwithstanding  his  bad 
sight,  he  could  recall  a  name,  a  figure,  a  gesture, 
an  odd  habitual  motion  or  a  form  of  speech  after 
several  years  had  gone  by.  He  suddenly  asked 
one  of  his  old  fellow  pupils  of  Lyons  College,  whom 
he  had  not  seen  for  thirty  years: 

"  Why,  you  still  have  it  there  on  the  nail  of  your 


Life  and  Literature.  25 

thumb,  I  do  believe !     That  Httle  blood-red  mark 
that  used  to  astonish  me  when  you  wrote  !  " 

His  most  vivid  recollections  comprised  one  of 
the  emotions  of  the  past  which  he  reconstructed 
for  us  with  complete  fidelity  to  fact.  I  still  have 
ringing  in  my  ears  an  account  of  a  conflagration  in 
which  the  flames  were  still  crackling,  and  through 
which  the  outlines  of  firemen  and  half-nude  women 
ran  helter-skelter.  He  appeared  on  the  scene  of 
the  combat  pouring  water  himself  and  having 
water  poured  on  him,  holding  a  lance  in  his  hand. 
He  had  attained  the  age  of  ten  years !  "  Stay 
there,  boy  !  "  one  of  the  life-savers  said  to  him.  He 
did  stay  there  until  the  flames  came  and  burned  off 
his  eyelashes  and  licked  at  his  hands.  And  he  had 
never  forgotten  the  cries,  or  the  cracking  of  beams, 
or  the  flares  of  light,  or  the  terror  on  the  counten- 
ances, or  his  own  particular  emotion  mixed  with 
joy.  And  how  he  did  tell  us  all  that !  With  what 
exact  and  striking  strokes  of  the  brush ! 

Another  time  it  was  an  inundation  from  a  sudden 
freshet  in  the  Rhone,  with  the  strokes  like  a  batter- 
ing ram  in  the  cellars  delivered  by  the  running 
water;  this  he  recalled,  adding  detail  to  detail, 
while  his  thought  turned  back  to  the  past.  Then 
the  crashing  boats  and  that  very  boat  on  which  he 
stood,  and  the  drunken  feeling  of  danger  he  had ; 
then  the  people  invaded  by  the  flood,  perched  in 
clusters  on  the  roofs  of  houses,  and  again,  the 
moaning  gulfs  and  whirlpools,  the  irresistible  qual- 
ity of  the  waters. 

The  peculiarity  of  a  mind   like  his   is  this :    it 


26  Alpkonse  Daudet. 

makes  a  sort  of  tapestry  out  of  so  many  different 
kinds  of  images,  groups  everything  and  classifies 
everything  unconsciously  through  the  slow  labor  of 
perfection.  From  the  natural  tendency  of  images 
to  come  together,  through  that  movement  of  im- 
pressions which  have  been  received,  which  brings 
them  into  contact  the  one  with  the  other,  it  thus 
forms  the  complete  bundle  of  impressions.  The 
peculiarity  of  a  mind  of  that  kind  is  that  it  makes 
use  of  the  slightest  touches  in  its  incessant  labor 
in  order  to  compare  things,  deduce  and  amplify 
them  without  deforming  them,  just  as  naturally  as 
the  heart  beats  and  the  lungs  inhale. 

Take  the  works  of  the  great  writers.  Note  with 
care  the  dominant  points ;  it  will  be  very  surprising 
if  you  do  not  notice  two  or  three  fixed  and  well 
defined  pictures  among  the  most  varied  and  rich 
descriptions ;  they  return  periodically  but  they  are 
painted  in  new  colors.  Among  the  wealth  of  char- 
acters created  by  Balzac,  Goethe  or  Dickens  or 
Tolstoy,  there  are  certain  primordial  turns  of  char- 
acter, certain  basic  elements  in  nature  which  are 
central  and  marking  points.  Life  has  given  them 
into  the  hand  of  genius.  Genius  has  returned  them 
to  life  while  decking  them  with  all  its  own  prestige. 

Thus  it  was  with  my  father.  I  can  well  remem- 
ber his  astonishment  when,  having  begged  his 
friend  Gustave  Toudouze  to  make  a  selection  from 
his  works  in  which  only  examples  of  materialistic 
love  should  be  found,  the  latter  pointed  out  in  the 
long  line  of  his  novels  and  dramas  a  constant  return 
to  the  motive  of  "  the  mother,"  who  is  herself  the 


Life  and  Literature.  27 

sum  and  entirety  of  human  tenderness.  Without 
his  knowing  it,  the  figure  of  her  who  conceives  us, 
bears,  nourishes  and  educates  us,  suffers  with  our 
sufferings  and  becomes  radiant  with  our  own  hap- 
piness, and  ceaselessly  sacrifices  herself  for  us, 
that  admirable  and  spotless  figure  had  taken  pos- 
session of  him.  In  his  eyes  she  was  the  grandest 
and  deepest  problem  of  the  heart,  and,  without  his 
having  noticed  it,  this  problem  had  ever  harassed 
him  under  all  its  forms. 

He  attached  an  enormous  value  to  the  emotions 
which  open  up  our  lives.  **  There  is  a  period,"  he 
cried,  "when  one  hsiS  finished  printing.  After  that 
come  the  second  editions."  And  often  I  have 
found  him  occupied  by  this  other  thought,  subsid- 
iary to  the  last :  "  In  the  human  being  there  is  a 
centre,  a  nucleus  which  never  changes  and  never 
takes  on  wrinkles ;  whence  our  astonishment  at 
the  swift  flight  of  the  years  and  the  functional  and 
physical  modifications  that  befall  us." 

When  one  of  these  statements  caught  hold  of 
him  he  was  not  satisfied  with  a  formula,  however 
clear-cut  and  well-defined.  In  the  first  place  a 
formula  scared  him.  He  saw  in  a  formula  the 
image  of  death,  he  wished  to  nourish  it  with  exam- 
ples. He  believed  that  on  the  day  when  the  for- 
mula would  no  longer  apply  directly  to  life  it 
would  lose  its  sincerity  and  become  a  dead  leaf 
"  Humanity,"  that  is  the  grand  word  which  includes 
all  those  tendencies  which  I  am  now  piously  un- 
ravelling here,  a  word  full  of  blood  and  nerves, 
which  was  the  motto  of  my  tender  friend. 


28  Alphonse  Daudet. 

During  those  last  years  we  often  went  out  to- 
gether. As  long  as  he  was  able  to  choose  his 
carriage  at  the  station,  it  was  always  the  most  for- 
bidding and  dilapidated  he  took,  a  carriage  which 
he  thought  nobody  else  would  accept.  I  remem- 
ber a  very  old  coachman,  driving  with  great  diffi- 
culty a  very  old  horse  and  seated  on  the  tottering 
box  of  one  of  those  fantastic  cabs  such  as  one  may 
find  waiting  for  the  night  trains.  My  father  had 
adopted  this  wretched  team  as  his  own  and  as 
soon  as  we  turned  the  corner  of  Bellechasse  Street 
we  were  sure  to  see  it  jogging  toward  us.  On  his 
part  the  old  fellow  had  fallen  in  love  with  this  easy- 
going customer,  who  never  found  fault  with  his 
slowness  and  his  lack  of  cleanliness.  One  of  the 
last  times  that  we  took  him,  before  he  went  to 
complete  wreck  among  the  shadows  of  Paris,  what 
did  he  think  of  but  a  plan  of  writing  large,  in  big 
red  letters,  on  the  panels  and  on  the  glasses  of  the 
cab,  the  initials  A.  D.,  thus  calling  attention  and 
announcing  himself  as  the  property  of  the  person 
who  had  taken  compassion  upon  him  ! 

A  crowd  of  little  reminiscences  of  this  sort  fly 
about  my  heart.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  jot  some  of 
them  down,  so  that  when  you  read  his  great  books, 
dripping  with  emotion  and  sweetness,  you  may 
know  that  they  were  the  fruit  of  a  sincere  soul,  as 
splendid  in  his  slighter  movements  as  in  his  long 
and  patient  efforts. 

Naturally  our  outings  were  but  little  varied.  We 
caused  ourselves  to  be  driven  along  the  Champs- 
Elys^es  as  far  as  the  Arc  de  Triomphe.    My  father 


Life  and  Literature.  29 

loved  that  splendid  sloping  way,  which  recalled  to 
him  so  many  memories,  recollections  that  I  fol- 
lowed in  his  expressive  eyes,  eyes  always  turned 
toward  the  picturesque,  seizing  upon  and  defining 
humanity  with  a  fabulous  quickness.  If  he  felt 
himself  more  than  usually  melancholy,  we  went  to 
Bethune  Quay,  where  the  history  of  Paris  vibrates 
from  the  ancient  stones  as  they  warm  beneath  a 
pale  autumnal  sun. 

Beloved  sun,  how  my  father  did  adore  you ! 
Though  meagre  and  pale,  that  sun  recalled  to  him 
his  balmy  Provence,  the  very  name  of  which  would 
cause  his  face  to  change  and  would  bring  back 
color  to  his  pallid  cheek.  "  Primeval  joy :  to  cook 
one's  back  in  the  sun  !  "  *  Oh,  for  a  good  cagnard^ 
down  there  toward  the  Durance !  "  he  would  say, 
resting  gently  on  my  arm  and  looking  into  the 
whirling  water  of  the  Seine.  Whereupon,  as  if 
given  wings  by  his  dream,  he  would  start  off  on  his 
voyage  toward  one  of  those  mirages  which 
made  a  perpetual  enchantment  of  his  slightest 
conversation. 

It  might  start  with  some  trivial  remark :  a  ray 
of  light  on  the  forged  iron  of  a  balcony,  a  pane  of 
glass  lit  with  the  sun,  a  reflection  flung  up  from 
the  river.  Stimulated  by  some  nice  parallel  — 
and  no  one  loved  exact  nicety  so  much  —  he 
would  squeeze  my  arm  a  little  and  his  imagination 
would  rouse  itself  The  merely  picturesque  tired 
him    quickly.     It   was    necessary   that   something 

1  A  little  shelter  from  the  wind  made  of  reeds  in  which  to  lie 
and  sun  oneself. 


30  Alphonse  Daudet. 

human  should  intervene.  All  he  needed  was  a 
half-opened  shutter  to  cause  him  to  picture  the 
entire  interior  with  the  poetical  decision  of  the  old 
masters  of  Holland.  It  might  be  an  anxious  old 
woman's  outline,  an  old  man  drinking  in  his  last 
sip  of  sunlight,  or  some  mark  of  tenderness  in  the 
people  —  childhood  or  decrepitude  ;  he  divined 
their  meaning,  combined  and  evoked  their  story, 
glad  at  his  own  discoveries ;  and  so  ever  with  a 
gay  and  easy  air  he  scattered  abroad  his  energy 
and  verbal  treasures:  "We  are  still  playing 
Robinson  Crusoe,  my  boy,"  said  he,  "just  as  we 
did  in  the  old  times  under  the  lap-rug.  Every  one 
of  these  good  people  is  living  on  his  own  narrow 
island,  very  zealous  indeed  on  the  subject  of  his 
nourishment  and  the  satisfaction  of  his  interests  !  " 

During  a  terrible  summer's  heat  on  that  very 
Bethune  Quay  we  saw  a  workman  stripped  to  the 
waist  who  was  laughing  under  the  spout  of  a 
watering-cart  which  was  being  vigorously  played 
upon  him.  That  powerful  torso,  that  masculine 
attitude,  those  swollen  muscles,  his  powerful  short 
neck  and  erect  head,  these  formed  a  departing  point 
for  a  magical  improvisation.  How  he  gloried  in  the 
robustness  and  simplicity  of  the  man !  What 
splendid  things  he  said  concerning  sculpture  and 
muscles  played  upon  by  the  sun,  concerning  sweat 
and  water,  the  caryatids  carved  by  Puget,  and  that 
antique  vision  which  appeared  round  the  corner  of 
a  Parisian  street ! 

There  !  I  can  see  his  quick  and  generous  smile, 
I   can  hear   his  laugh.     For,  notwithstanding  his 


Life  and  Literature.  31 

sufferings,  he  preserved  his  gayety  and  took 
advantage  of  the  slightest  respite ;  fun  sprang 
spontaneously  and  irresistibly  from  a  character  so 
in  love  with  nature,  so  ready  to  seize  upon  amus- 
ing thoughts  at  the  very  moment  that  they  were 
making  him  sad.  We  never  knew  one  of  his  rare 
fits  of  wrath  which  could  not  be  disarmed  by  a 
droll  turn  of  words.  Then  it  was  delightful  to  see 
how  his  severe  face  changed,  how  he  yielded  with 
delight,  only  too  glad  to  return  to  the  usual 
sweetness  of  his  nature. 

It  was  when  he  happened  to  be  with  his  old 
friend  Frederic  Mistral,  whom  he  loved  and 
cherished,  it  was  at  that  charming  table  of  his 
where  genius  sat  enthroned,  or  else  it  was  at  the 
house  of  the  Parrocels,  likewise  in  Provence,  that 
I  have  seen  him  oftenest  the  cause  and  starting- 
point  of  tumultuous  fun.  His  inherited  race  char- 
acteristics, his  surroundings  and  contact  with  his 
compatriots  roused  in  him  vivid,  unexpected,  im- 
promptu dramatic  power.  He  imitated  the  differ- 
ent accents  in  the  dialects  between  Valence  and 
Marseilles,  the  very  attitudes  and  gestures  of  the 
people.  He  gave  us  the  benefit  of  the  two  voices 
in  the  same  narrator  —  that  voice  which  claims  all 
the  advantages,  counsels,  lays  down  the  law  and 
defines  things,  as  well  as  that  voice  which  starts 
contradictions,  stutters  and  goes  all  to  pieces. 

He  gave  us  the  worthy  citizen,  the  "  Cato  in 
very  low  relief,"  the  sententious  man,  libidinous 
and  longfaced,  whom  the  boarding-school  teachers 
fear.      He  played   the  politician  with  dishevelled 


32  Alphonse  Daudet. 

hair,  slipping  in  the  vehemence  of  his  speech  into 
the  most  dangerous  metaphors.  Then  we  would 
get  "  dear  old  Father  Oily,"  or  the  godly  woman 
confessing  herself  in  the  confessional  box  and  the 
same  woman  cursing  a  station  master :  or,  again,  a 
customs  officer,  a  servant,  a  child  who  clamors 
for  his  orange,  the  crowd  collected  at  a  bull- 
fight. 

In  one  of  our  first  trips  down  South  we  were  in 
a  waiting  room  of  the  tavern  while  the  rain  fell 
without;  the  presence  of  his  dear  friends  Aubanel, 
Mistral  and  F^lix  Gras  who  were  drinking  with  us 
and  the  giddy  joy  of  "showing  them  off "  to  his 
wife,  his  Parisian  girl,  roused  in  him  memories  of 
his  most  turbulent  youth.  The  round  table  of 
poets  grew  wildly  excited.  There  were  songs 
from  the  countryside,  old  Christmas  waits  in  which 
tears  were  mixed  with  smiles,  rich  ballads  from 
lies  d'Or  and  passionate  cries  from  the  Grenade 
Entr'oiiverte.  The  correct  and  warm  voice  of  my 
father  dominated  the  noise  and  showed  me  its 
beauty  by  its  rhythm.  Enthusiasm  was  seen  on 
every  face ;  the  real  sun  of  Provence  was  shining 
there  in  that  tavern  ! 

It  is  that  frantic  fun,  it  is  that  flashing  of  gayety 
which  make  Tartarin  and  Roumestan  such  rare 
and  charming  books,  true  products  of  the  soil, 
warm  and  savory,  juicy  and  brilliant.  But  the  fine 
characteristics  in  my  father's  nature  sparkled  all 
through  his  life  before  they  came  to  ornament  his 
books.  When  I  open  one  of  them  I  hear  his  sweet 
and   quiet  accent ;  how  is  it  possible  to  separate 


Life  and  Literature.  33 

that  memory  from  the  part  which  the  future  will 
find  to  admire  in  him? 

As  a  matter  of  fact  his  celebrated  irony  was 
really  the  fine  flower  of  his  tenderness.  By  means 
of  that  irony  he  escaped  from  the  commonplace 
and  avoided  the  bitterness  of  comparisons.  By 
means  of  it  he  brushed  artifice  aside.  Gifted  with 
so  spontaneous  a  talent,  he  escaped  vulgar 
comedy ;  endowed  with  a  sensitiveness  which  was 
sharp  and  even  cruel,  he  softened  its  effect  with 
smiles  and  appeased  its  acridity  with  those  twists 
and  turns  which  leave  the  soul  of  the  reader  trem- 
bling and  impressed,  instead  of  overwhelmed  with 

gall 

This  irony,  purely  Latin  in  its  genius,  has  been 
compared  to  the  sarcasm  of  Henri  Heine.  Such 
parallels  are  almost  always  false.  Heine  was  an 
exquisite  poet  but  an  exile  and  a  nomad,  having 
no  connection  with  his  own  soil  and  suffering  from 
the  fact  that  he  could  not  find  a  surrounding 
nature.  He  makes  the  whole  world  responsible 
for  his  disquiet.  Hardly  has  he  excited  emotion, 
when  he  puts  us  to  the  rout  with  a  bitter  grin.  He 
sneers  at  our  hearts  and  at  his  own  heart.  Gifted 
with  a  nature  of  marvellous  harmony,  he  throws  all 
his  sensations  into  disorder,  and  when  one  ap- 
proaches him  to  sympathize,  he  escapes  from  us 
with  a  grimace.  My  father  knew  well  the  beaten 
footpaths  of  his  own  friendships. 

He  used  to  speak  of  a  ballad  from  the  north  of 
France  in  which  a  woman  who  sees  her  husband 
again  after  a  long  absence  begins  to  weep.     This 

3 


34  Alphonse  Daudet. 

same  ballad  in  its  Southern  version  makes  her  keep 
herself  from  smiling.  In  that  little  allegory  he  was 
defining  his  own  character. 

In  his  little  note-books  I  read  a  reproach  ad- 
dressed to  the  husband  who  relates  to  his  young 
wife  all  the  love  adventures  of  his  past :  "  Idiot, 
you  '11  find  out  later "  is  the  end  of  the  note. 
Under  that  simple  form,  behold  the  irony.  It  is  a 
mask  for  pity.  The  picture  in  Jack  of  the  men 
have  "  missed  fire,"  the  supper  of  the  Old  Guard 
in  Sappho  and  one  page  or  other  of  L'Immortel, 
are  further  examples  of  that  tendency  he  had 
to  move  his  readers  by  taking  the  slant  road,  if 
the  direct  path  seemed  too  much  trodden.  That 
is  the  resource  for  a  warm  heart  which  has  a  cer- 
tain bashfulness  with  regard  to  over-vivid  and  too- 
apparent  sensations. 

In  this  manner  the  author  of  Femmes  d' Artistes 
and  of  Tartarin,  of  Le  Nabab  and  of  L'Immortel 
rose  to  the  height  of  lofty  satire,  which  is  nothing 
else  but  an  inverted  lyricism  and  constitutes  the 
revenge  of  generous  souls.  Irritated  and  wounded, 
the  poet  causes  the  brazen  string  to  vibrate;  but 
there  is  never  anything  too  harsh,  even  amid  the 
most  bitter  assaults !  "  Implacability,"  that  word 
made  him  ponder.  Every  fault  seemed  to  him 
capable  of  correction  and  every  vice  capable  of 
remedy;  he  sought  for  some  excuse  for  every 
crime.  I  have  found  the  finest  arguments  in  favor 
of  human  liberty  and  of  the  resources  offered  by 
the  moral  world  in  that  same  life  of  his,  so  simple 
and  open  to  the  day. 


Life  and  Literature.  35 

The  man  who  has  been  reproached  in  so  silly  a 
way  for  never  having  given  forth  metaphysical 
ideas  seemed  to  me  on  the  contrary  ever  troubled 
with  those  great  problems  of  the  world  within  us, 
which  are  now  the  mirage  of  inspiration  and  now 
the  mainspring  of  our  actions. 

Among  philosophers  he  admired  Descartes  and 
Spinoza,  as  much  for  their  lucidity  of  mind  as  for 
their  minute  and  anxious  researches  into  the  play 
of  human  passions.  If  his  love  of  life  drew  back 
before  the  extra-terrestrial  form  of  those  mathe- 
matical formulas  applied  to  flesh  and  spirit ;  if  he 
preferred  Montaigne's  method,  he  also  loved,  as  he 
said,  to  "  inhale  a  breath  upon  the  lofty  heights  " 
of  Spinoza's  Ethics.  He  often  said  that  it  would 
have  been  singularly  interesting  if  some  Claude 
Bernard  should  annotate  these  commentaries  on 
the  movements  of  the  soul. 

For  Schopenhauer  he  had  a  very  pronounced 
taste.  That  combination  of  incisive  humor  and 
power  of  dialectics,  that  tissue  woven  of  the  black- 
est arguments  and  picturesque  aphorisms  delighted 
him.  I  read  aloud  long  extracts  from  Schopen- 
hauer; having  taken  them  thoroughly  in,  he  pon- 
dered over  these  readings,  and  took  them  up 
again  on  the  morrow,  enriching  them  with  subtle 
remarks. 

We  used  to  talk  everywhere  and  at  all  times. 
He  delighted  in  shutting  himself  up  with  me  in  his 
dressing  room ;  I  can  see  him  now  interrupting 
himself  to  discuss  a  point,  a  comb  or  a  brush  in  his 
hand,  and  then,  when  our  ideas  began  to  get  into 


36  Alp  house  Daudet 

a  fog,  thrusting  his  head  down  into  the  basin  "  in 
order  to  clear  up  our  ideas."  "  My  boy,  the 
action  of  fresh  water  on  the  brain  in  the  morning 
is  a  grand  problem  all  of  itself!  The  man  who, 
having  made  a  night  of  it,  has  not  washed  himself 
or  made  his  toilet,  is  capable  of  performing  the 
most  frightful  follies,  and  is  incapable  of  the  mean- 
est train  of  argument." 

Incidentally  I  have  spoken  of  his  conscientious- 
ness. He  returned  always  to  the  same  subject 
without  ostentation  and  without  dulness,  as  long 
as  anything  which  was  obscure  remained.  He 
would  not  take  words  for  coin.  "  Sellers  of 
phrases "  —  that  is  what  he  called  those  hard- 
skulled  reasoners  who  would  like  to  run  the  moral 
world  by  mathematics  and  in  accordance  with 
fixed  laws.  "  I  do  detest  the  automatic  point 
of  view !  "  he  would  also  cry,  when  considering 
some  icy  and  involved  analysis ;  and  as  to  this 
"  automatic  point  of  view "  he  showed  how  it 
killed  off  every  kind  of  frankness  and  all  original 
impulse,  down  to  the  simple  happiness  that  comes 
from  creation. 

Suffering,  which  is  so  relaxing  and  persuasive, 
has  periodical  phases.  The  song  of  the  nightingale 
is  capable  of  inspiring  in  us  disgust  for  a  delicate 
machine.  What  poetry  there  is  in  the  fall  of  the 
leaves,  the  retardation  of  waters  as  they  turn  to 
ice,  if  at  the  same  time  one  thinks  of  the  alterna- 
tion of  the  seasons ! 

Unless  I  am  mistaken,  metaphysics  themselves, 
having  finally  taken  up  the  consideration   of  the 


Life  and  Literature.  37 

feelings,  will  take  account  in  the  near  future  of 
those  very  arguments  which  are  called  reasoning 
from  feeling,  which  so  profoundly  correspond  with 
our  need  of  liberty  for  the  mind.  Unless  I  am 
mistaken,  the  grand  philosophical  system  that  we 
shall  have  to-morrow  will  put  emotion  in  the  first 
rank  and  will  subordinate  all  else  to  it. 

Possessed  of  an  absolutely  honest  intellectual 
process  and  ever  a  prey  to  constant  scruples,  my 
father  never  hesitated  to  acknowledge  himself  igno- 
rant of  anything:  "I  do  not  know  —  Why,  I  did 
not  know  that !  "  His  eye  would  brighten  at  once. 
Filled  with  the  delight  of  learning,  he  would  forget 
other  people  and  busy  himself  only  with  that  per- 
son who  could  bring  to  him  a  novel  point  of  view 
or  a  story  full  of  useful  results. 

His  knowledge  was  vast  and  accurate.  More- 
over he  surprised  me  sometimes,  when  our  talk 
fell  upon  some  scientific  or  social  subject,  by  the 
truth  of  his  information  and  the  largeness  of  his 
views.  He  read  enormously  and  with  method, 
and  assimilated  difficult  questions  to  his  mind 
with  marvellous  quickness.  He  demonstrated  the 
strength  and  the  weakness  of  an  argument  and 
called  attention  to  the  paradox.  His  love  of  truth 
was  of  use  to  him  there  as  always,  since  it  freed  him 
from  prejudice  and  refreshed  his  logical  strength. 
Long-winded  theories  bothered  him :  "  Let  us  get 
forward  to  the  picture."  I  can  see  the  movement 
of  his  hand  sweeping  aside  mere  words. 

He  had  a  real  and  abiding  love  for  Latin  and 
Greek.     Because  he  admired  education,  he  made 


38  Alp  house  Daudet. 

of  education  one  of  the  grand  mainsprings  of 
humanity  and  was  up  in  arms  against  the  new 
pedagogues  who  try  to  restrict  the  study  of  dead 
languages : 

"  Certain  men  and  women,"  cried  he,  "  who  pos- 
sess the  innate  gift  of  style,  have  instinctively  the 
taste  and  the  tact  to  choose  the  words  which 
they  employ.  A  woman  of  that  kind  was  the 
much-to-be-admired  Sevigne.  But  that  sort  of 
mind  is  a  great  exception.  Most  people  get  from 
classical  study  a  benefit  which  nothing  else  can 
replace.  The  mind  which  feels  the  beauty  of 
Tacitus,  Lucretius  or  Virgil  is  very  near  being 
that  of  a  writer." 

Tacitus  was  always  to  be  found  upon  his  table 
by  the  side  of  Montaigne.  He  read  from  him  a 
little  at  a  time,  only  a  page  or  two,  and  then  trans- 
lated him  after  a  style  which  I  have  found  in  very 
few  masters.  Besides,  he  had  already  shown  a 
proof  of  his  cleverness  in  that  line  by  his  transla- 
tion into  French  of  the  admirable  Provengal  prose 
of  Baptiste  Bonnet.  And  as  far  as  the  Annals 
are  concerned,  I  have  seen  him  for  hours  at  a  time 
feverishly  hunting  for  a  faithful  and  correct  expres- 
sion, as  anxious  to  fulfil  the  poetic  rights  of  the  ear 
as  those  of  the  mind. 

Difficulties  delighted  him.  How  often,  whilst  I 
was  making  my  studies,  when  too  arid  and  close  a 
text  had  brought  me  to  a  stop,  did  I  leave  the 
book  on  his  table  of  an  evening ;  the  next  morn- 
ing early  I  would  find  it  there  with  the  French 
translation  opposite.    My  professors  complimented 


Life  and  Literature.  39 

me  and  gave  out  my  work  as  examples  to  the  class. 
At  the  general  competitions  for  rhetoric  I  remem- 
ber a  sentence  which  had  shipwrecked  the  strong- 
est of  us.  The  line  has  remained  in  my  memory, 
it  is  such  a  model  of  a  Chinese  puzzle. 

"  Ut  cortina  sonet  celeri  distincta  meatu." 

My  father  took  the  accursed  page,  and,  whilst  he 
walked  once  round  the  garden,  translated  it  for 
me  without  hesitating  into  words  quite  as  strong, 
robust  and  brilliant  as  those  of  the  author ;  and  he 
added,  in  order  to  console  me : 

"  Certain  pages,  and  those  by  no  means  the 
least  beautiful,  of  my  dear  de  Goncourt  will  cer- 
tainly prove  as  difficult  for  the  college  boys  to 
come  as  that  line  is." 

He  broke  me  into  my  Latin  by  reading  the 
verses  or  fragments  of  examples  in  prose  with 
which  Montaigne  interlarded  his  Essays: 

"As  for  us  people  of  the  South,  the  classic 
phrase  has  never  died  out  amongst  us.  Just  look 
at  this  Gascon  of  the  sixteenth  century !  He  de- 
lights in  manuscripts  ever  opened  and  reopened. 
Parchments  preserved  in  monasteries  and  libraries 
have  the  authority  of  oracles  to  him,  of  messages 
from  the  past.  He  clothes  his  modern  arguments 
in  toga  and  buskins.  He  grafts  the  sibylline  leaves 
upon  his  thick-leaved  tree.  The  '  Renaissance,' 
my  dear  boy  —  have  you  ever  comprehended  the 
entire  meaning  of  that  splendid  word  ?  It  is  Pan 
the  Great  restored  to  life.  Rising  from  out  old 
dusty  scrolls,  a  tremendous  shudder  ran  through 


40  Alphonse  Daudet. 

souls  alive  with  beauty,  '  Why,  then,  let  Gascon 
words  fill  the  gap,'  said  Montaigne,  *  if  French  will 
not  do ! '  But  there  was  Latin  also  and  Greek 
besides.  '  Let  beauty  show,  let  plainness  hide  its 
head,'  as  our  own  Mistral  sings. 

"  Don't  you  see  him,  that  happy  Michel  who 
shows  us  Michel  himself  and  recognizes  in  him  the 
nature  of  all  men,  don't  you  see  him  in  his  library, 
trembling  with  enthusiasm  before  the  grandeur  of 
nature,  gesticulating,  like  the  regular  Southerner 
he  is,  at  the  memory  of  some  line  from  Lucretius 
which  delights  him  and  corroborates  his  thought? 
Antiquity  pulses  through  his  heart.  Thirst  for 
learning  consumes  him.  And  over  everything  else 
stands  the  necessity  of  expansiveness,  of  telling  all 
about  himself,  which  is  so  active  in  modern  char- 
acters as  they  are  still  found  among  us." 

Such  bits  of  talk  as  this  have  remained  in  my 
intellectual  treasury.  Alas,  I  have  just  perceived 
that  there  is  lacking  to  it  the  warm  Southern 
accent,  the  "  monster  "  itself.  And,  as  happens  in 
meetings  constantly  renewed,  we  were  apt  to  return 
to  the  same  subjects ;  but  each  time  my  father 
added  something.  Until  the  day  of  his  death  his 
life  was  a  perpetual  seeking. 

Some  few  friends  are  able  to  recall  the  memory 
of  a  page  from  Rabelais  read  aloud  by  him.  He 
had  found  a  good  many  bushes  and  fronds  and 
flowers  from  the  South  in  that  forest  of  Gargantua 
and  of  Pantagruel.  The  author's  long  stay  at 
Montpellier  explains  these  reminiscences  in  Rabe- 
lais.    At  the  end  of  his  own  copy  my  father  has 


Life  and  Literature.  41 

noted  down  the  chief  localisms ;  naturally  they 
greatly  stirred  his  lively  soul.  He  mimicked  for 
us  the  entire  tempest  scene  or  else  the  adventures 
of  Gargantua,  booming  up  his  voice  to  the  diapa- 
son of  frenzy,  laughing  at  himself  at  the  same 
time,  throwing  back  his  hair,  sticking  his  eyeglass 
into  his  eye,  fairly  drunk  with  the  power  of  words 
the  while. 

Another  day  it  would  be  Diderot  whom  he 
would  take  up  and  celebrate  by  declaiming  his 
most  brilliant  pages,  the  most  vibrating  of  those 
in  Ceci  n^est  pas  un  conte,  Maintes  lettres  a  Made- 
moiselle Volland,  or  else  Le  Neveu  de  Rameau.  At 
another  time  it  would  be  Chateaubriand,  in  whom 
he  admired  his  long  deep  breath  and  his  rhythm 
like  the  tremendous  swing  of  billows.  In  his  verses 
he  pointed  out  that  epic  tone  which  is  applied  to 
familiar  reminiscences,  that  splendor  of  a  soul 
which  never  weakens,  though  always  melancholy 
and  as  it  were  draped  in  the  classic  folds  of  mourn- 
ing for  its  lost  illusions. 

I  would  have  to  pass  the  entire  French  literature 
in  review  in  order  to  cite  the  literary  gods  my 
father  adored  and  invoked,  from  whom  in  his 
sorrowful  hours  he  demanded  comfort.  O  the 
miracles  wrought  by  poetry !  Our  friend  and 
parent  is  wrapped  in  gloom ;  he  is  suffering.  We 
hesitate  to  speak  to  him,  knowing  too  well  what 
his  answer  will  be.  All  of  a  sudden  a  name  or  a 
quotation  uttered  by  one  of  us  brings  life  back  to 
his  look,  as  if  it  were  the  coming  of  a  friend  or  a 
well-known  air  of  music.     In  a  moment  he  asks 


42  Alphonse  Daudet. 

what  is  going  on  and  is  all  excitement.  He  must 
have  the  book  and  the  page !  Lucien  or  I  run 
to  the  library.  Oftener  it  is  my  mother  who  takes 
the  trouble,  because  she  has  a  clear  and  soft  voice 
and  never  hurries.  Here  are  the  Confessions  or 
the  Mhnoires  d^ Oiitre-Tonibe.  At  the  first  words 
uttered  my  father  is  no  longer  the  same  man.  He 
approves  and  degustates,  his  head  inclined  forward 
in  the  attitude  of  meditation  as  he  stuffs  his  little 
English  pipe.  He  interrupts.  He  asks  us  to  go 
on  again.  He  questions  the  author  and  discusses 
a  matter  with  him.  Enthusiasm  has  driven  out 
suffering  and  moroseness  and  started  up  again  the 
fires  of  youth. 

Now  it  is  our  turn  to  listen,  and  the  hours  pass 
as  in  a  dream,  and  those  magnificent  phrases  of 
a  past  generation  live  once  more  a  pallid  life  at  the 
touch  of  a  wand  from  a  magician  such  as  he  was. 
So,  across  the  ages,  do  those  who  love  and  seek  out 
beauty  begin  their  lives  anew. 

Since  the  love  of  research  is  universal  in  a  mind 
of  that  kind,  I  would  hardly  know  how  to  tell  its 
depth  and  width.  The  misfortune  of  a  study  of 
this  sort  is  that  of  necessity  one  is  limited.  One 
of  the  virtues  in  the  model  I  have  before  me  was 
exactly  that  continuity  of  his,  his  harmoniousness, 
or,  if  one  may  so  express  it,  the  architecture  of  his 
joys  and  sorrows.  So  it  was  that,  being  a  connois- 
seur of  words  and  always  surrounded  by  dictiona- 
ries of  the  first  class,  such  as  that  compiled  by 
Mistral,  he  loved  to  examine  the  debris  and 
metamorphoses    of   a   word.      Thence    derive  his 


Life  and  Literature.  43 

exactness  and  the  beautiful  clearness  of  his 
style. 

Every  one  of  those  noble  feelings  was  a  guide  and 
torch  to  his  feet.  He  judged  of  a  word  by  his  ear 
which  in  him  possessed  delicacy  and  a  supreme 
wisdom ;  and  by  his  eye,  because  in  spite  of  his 
short  sight,  he  was  a  seer.  He  weighed  the  word 
and  rolled  it  on  his  tongue  like  a  connoisseur ;  for 
there  is  more  than  one  noun  which  will  evoke  an 
entire  period  for  us,  more  than  one  adjective  whose 
historical  importance  is  greater  than  that  of  a 
manuscript  or  a  suit  of  armor. 

He  avoided  the  exceptional  and  precious,  know- 
ing well  that  there  is  often  a  rare  quality  in  some 
word  of  seemingly  common  appearance ;  he  left  its 
true  meaning  to  every  term,  being  an  enemy  of  the 
torturing  of  language,  because  he  understood  its 
structure  so  well.  It  is  one  of  the  follies  of  our 
time  to  believe  that  limpid  transparency  cannot 
exist  along  with  depth.  There  are  rivers  whose 
pebbly  bottoms  gleam  as  if  they  lay  just  beneath 
the  surface  —  but  a  giant  may  drown  himself 
therein  ! 

He  reiterated  :  "  I  hate  monsters  !  "  The  con- 
versations of  Eckermann  and  Goethe  which  for  a 
long  time  were  his  breviary  (for  he  changed  his 
intellectual  loves  and  only  showed  a  continuous 
fidelity  to  Montaigne)  are  confirmation  of  several 
stages  in  that  thought.  My  father  sided  with 
Goethe,  whose  motto  "  Reality  and  Poetiy  "  seemed 
to  him  to  sum  up  the  wisdom  of  mankind.  He 
was  also  wont  to  say :   "  Nothing  in  excess  !  "  and 


44  Alphonse  Daudet. 

in  truth  sanity  of  mind  and  a  hatred  of  that  too- 
much,  which  one  finds  unfortunately  among  most 
Southerners,  were  brought  to  their  highest  expres- 
sion in  him. 

"  On  Goethe's  side  against  Jean-Paul  "  —  how 
often  have  we  not  held  discussions  concerning 
tendencies.  "  Art "  was  one  objection  he  made 
"  is  not  merely  the  expression  of  one's  own  char- 
acter ;  the  man  who  does  not  drive  the  monsters 
out  of  his  own  soul  is  very  soon  devoured  by 
them." 

When  we  were  discussing  this  question  we  would 
often  glide  quickly  to  composition  and  the  architec- 
ture of  a  work,  to  which  he  accorded  capital  impor- 
tance ;  according  to  him  it  was  the  condition  of  its 
durability :  "  Every  book  is  an  organism.  If  its 
organs  are  not  in  place,  it  must  die  and  its  corpse 
become  a  nuisance." 

And  since  he  had  given  great  thought  to  the 
putting  of  order  and  rule  into  his  novels  and 
dramas,  he  also  wished  to  make  his  interior  and 
outward  life  harmonious.  For  this  work  a  great 
mass  of  knowledge  and  of  studies  seemed  to  him 
necessary. 

In  his  library,  beside  all  the  great  masters,  the 
stories  of  life  and  adventure  were  found  on  the 
main  shelves.  He  stated  that  the  love  he  bore  for 
men  of  action  had  been  developed  in  his  case  by 
the  necessity  of  a  sedentary  life :  "  I  accomplish 
through  imagination  whatever  my  body  does  not 
allow  me  to  do." 

He  knew  in  detail  all  the  campaigns  of  his  hero 


Life  and  Literature  45 

Napoleon  and  the  journeys  of  his  other  hero  Stan- 
ley, as  well  as  expeditions  to  the  North  Pole.  When 
people  talked  to  him  of  the  nineteenth  century,  so 
restless  and  full  of  tumult  and  perhaps  more  covered 
with  incomplete  monuments  than  any  other,  he 
defined  it  with  two  names :  "  Hamlet  and  Bona- 
parte ;  one  the  prince,  not  only  of  Denmark,  but  of 
the  life  of  man  within ;  the  other,  a  source  of  the 
grandest  deeds  and  of  the  entire  gamut  of  gesticu- 
lation." 

As  for  Stanley,  he  did  not  boggle  at  comparing 
him  to  the  victor  of  Austerlitz.  The  works  of  this 
distinguished  man  never  left  him.  He  read  them 
on,  without  wearying.  During  a  recent  touch  of 
typhoid  fever  which  befell  me  and  which  I  shall 
have  reason  to  mention  often  as  one  of  the  lumin- 
ous summits  of  paternal  tenderness,  when  I  was 
lying  inert  for  hours  with  scarcely  a  bit  of  memory 
or  intelligence  remaining,  he  tried  to  bring  my 
wandering  faculties  back  by  reading  to  me  some 
pages  from  Through  Darkest  Africa,  or  from 
Five  Years  07i  the  Congo.  He  sat  close  to  my 
bed  toward  the  end  of  day  on  one  of  those  sultry 
days  near  the  close  of  May  which  are  so  trouble- 
some to  a  convalescent.  He  held  the  big  book  in 
his  weak  hands ;  he  wanted  to  carry  me  far,  far 
away  (using  the  remedy  which  was  a  solace  to  his 
own  sufferings)  in  the  wake  of  the  intrepid  trav- 
eller, overwhelmed  by  a  much  heavier  fever  than 
mine,  through  that  land  of  dangerous  plants,  and 
beneath  the  shadowy  dome  of  leaves. 

"  His  only  hope  was  in  his  companions,  Jephson, 


46  Alphonse  Daudet 

whom  you  saw  at  our  house,  a  brave  boy  with 
ruddy  cheeks,  and  that  delightful  Dr.  Clark.  And 
notwithstanding  his  delirium  he  retained  his  feeling 
of  responsibility.  He  remained  the  chief  in  the 
midst  of  all  his  sufferings.  What  an  extraordinary 
reservoir  of  energy  !  " 

Every  Thursday  he  explained  to  our  guests  that 
Stanley  was  not  a  cruel  man,  as  envious  people 
have  insinuated,  but  that  on  the  contrary  he  was 
the  most  humane  and  least  ferocious  of  conquerors ; 
that  he  was  as  just  as  he  was  firm. 

In  London,  during  a  journey  which  to-day  is 
precious  for  its  slightest  episode,  where  we  met  the 
man  whom  he  so  much  venerated,  when  he  had 
him  beside  him  on  a  little  low  sofa  it  was  one  of 
the  most  touching  spectacles  in  the  world  to  see 
the  affectionate  relationship  of  two  souls  which 
understood  one  another  so  well.  I  state  again : 
the  man  for  whom  my  father  had  such  a  real  and 
tangible  friendship  is  not  a  bad  man ;  in  him  one 
may  admire  one  of  the  finest  types  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race,  but  one  who  belongs  to  all  the  races 
through  the  discovery  of  a  continent,  through  a 
lucidity  of  mind  equal  to  his  courage  and  a  clear 
and  unhypocritical  judgment. 

At  the  time  of  that  very  jaunt  abroad  which  made 
it  possible  for  my  father  to  understand  England,  he 
also  had  the  delight  of  visiting  "  Hamlet "  at  the 
same  time  that  he  met "  Napoleon."  I  allude  to 
George  Meredith,  that  extraordinary  novelist  whose 
fame  is  brilliant  on  the  heights,  on  the  very  noblest 
summits  of  the  mind,  and  will  come  down  some 


Life  and  Literature  47 

day  to  delight  the  crowd  whenever  the  torches  take 
up  the  march.  What  a  deHghtful  visit  to  that 
green  country  about  Box-Hill  all  decked  with  trees 
and  waters,  where  the  author  of  The  Egoist  and 
Modern  Love  and  of  twenty  masterpieces  wel- 
comed at  one  and  the  same  time  his  comrade  in 
letters  and  the  family  of  that  comrade  with  a  tender 
and  spontaneous  charm ! 

How  I  cherished  you  that  day,  O  master  of  the 
bitterest  thought,  of  the  most  robust  and  liberal 
thought !  I  understood  you  to  the  verge  of  tears  ! 
What  things  passed  that  day  between  the  looks 
you  gave  forth  and  those  that  emanated  from  your 
brother  in  intellect !  What  hours  worthy  of  you 
and  of  your  power  of  analysis  were  passed  in  that 
cottage  where  lights  and  shades  played  about  your 
aureole.  O,  vast  and  subtle  heart,  and  friend  of  the 
French  to  the  point  of  having  defended  them  in 
1 870  with  a  piece  of  verse  unique  in  its  generosity! 
You  are  the  genius  whose  brain  devours  him  and 
who  with  a  subtle  smile  rails  upon  evil !  Hamlet? 
yes,  you  were  Hamlet  for  Alphonse  Daudet  and  his 
following,  a  mirror  as  it  were  of  Shakespeare  on  that 
spring  afternoon  when  nature  herself  became  mor- 
al, when  the  black  pine-trees  were  trembling  like 
so  many  human  bodies,  when  the  lawns  themselves 
seemed  to  have  the  softness  of  human  flesh  ! 

Above  and  beyond  love  there  is  another  love 
and  it  was  that  you  gave  as  a  gift  to  your  comrade, 
a  man  as  ardent  as  you  are  for  life  and  just  as 
yearning  for  beauty.  I  ponder  over  you  in  these 
sombre  hours  as  a  holder  of  those  secrets  which 


48  Alphonse  Daudet 

people  who  are  detached  from  this  world  hug  to 
their  breasts,  or  as  those  raisers  of  ghosts  who 
pursue  phantom  shades.  The  image  of  your  mag- 
nificent and  pure  features  shall  never  be  separated 
from  the  one  for  whom  I  weep  because  they  have 
lost  their  perishable  shape. 

As  far  as  Napoleon  Bonaparte  is  concerned,  one 
man  satisfied  the  passion  that  my  father  felt  for 
him,  namely,  our  friend  Frederic  Masson.  For 
many  years  he  clamored  for  those  books  in  which 
the  life  of  his  military  god  was  followed  day  by 
day,  in  which  the  author  unravelled  the  motives, 
the  character  and  the  adventures  of  Napoleon. 
When  Masson's  books  appeared  he  could  not 
leave  them ;  he  boasted  of  their  worth  to  every 
person  who  came  in ;  he  declared  that  the  task 
which  he  himself  had  so  often  dreamed  was  now 
accomplished,  —  namely,  to  reconstitute  the  man 
in  his  completeness,  further  the  love  of  him  and 
rouse  the  whole  race.  The  author  of  that  final 
and  definitive  work  will  hardly  deny  the  statement 
if  I  affirm  that  he  met  with  the  greatest  encourage- 
ments in  his  "  dear  Daudet." 

He  was  not  only  in  love  with  the  heroes  of 
action,  my  father  also  celebrated  the  lives  of  the 
obscure  and  devoted  ones,  those  who  were  sacri- 
ficed to  glory;  from  Rossel  "a  reversed  Bona- 
parte," "a  starless  one"  whose  name  returns  more 
than  fifty  times  in  the  little  note-books,  down  to 
the  bold  hero  of  Port-Breton,  down  to  Blanqui 
whom  Gustave  Geffroy  has  made  famous,  down  to 
Rimbaud     the    prodigious    and    the    Marquis   de 


Life  and  Literature.  49 

Mores  —  in  fact  all  those  who  nourished  tremen- 
dous plans,  men,  as  he  often  repeated,  following 
the  striking  formula  of  Baudelaire,  for  whom  action 
"  has  never  been  the  sister  of  their  imagination." 

His  shelves  were  filled  with  a  multitude  of  pam- 
phlets referring  to  the  works  and  deeds  of  these 
knights-errant,  these  men  of  imagination,  these 
deserters  from  an  existence  according  to  the  code, 
who  risked  their  lives  without  hope  of  return, 
railed  at  and  tempted  destiny,  throwing  their 
bodies  as  food  to  the  ravens  and  the  future,  men 
who  opened  up  new  paths  and  disdained  death. 
"  That  scorn  of  death  which  makes  man  invin- 
cible "  —  he  placed  that  above  everything.  He  was 
tremendously  interested  in  the  Trappists,  whom 
he  had  visited  in  Algiers,  and  in  the  Foreign  Le- 
gion and  in  the  fits  of  desire  for  revolution  and 
in  outbursts  of  unemployed  energy  seen  among 
those  boiling  courages  which  are  confined  with- 
out enough  breathable  air  by  our  false-faced  soci- 
ety, courages  which  are  lamed  by  the  tight  boots 
of  the  law. 

Enthusiasm  of  this  sort  brought  in  play  two 
sides  of  his  nature,  his  taste  for  risks  and  his  love 
for  humble  folk.  For  weeks  at  a  time  he  was 
haunted  by  the  defence  of  Tuyen-Quan  by  Domine 
and  Bobillot.  His  fantastic  faculty  of  turning  him- 
self into  others,  which  I  shall  examine  in  detail, 
permitted  him  to  take  on  himself  the  role  of  every 
one  and  follow  his  blunders  and  weaknesses  and 
recoveries.  *'  You  who  love  philosophy  so,  why 
don't  you  make  two  monographs,  one  on  Scruple 

4 


50  Alphonse  Daudet. 

and  the  other  on  Risk,  and  show  the  points  where 
they  meet?  Give  powerful  examples,  don't  fear 
to  lay  it  on  thick !  Your  old  father  will  supply 
you  with  the  images." 

On  my  return  from  a  trip  to  the  Alpine  Club  a 
month  before  his  death  I  told  him  that  I  had  made 
the  acquaintance  of  Capt.  Camps,  one  of  the  defen- 
ders of  Tuyen-Quan  ;  his  delight  was  endless :  "  I 
am  sure  you  did  not  know  how  to  make  him  talk ! 
What  did  they  eat?  When  did  they  sleep?  The 
cries  of  the  Chinese  during  the  night !  And  the 
battles  following  one  another  !  Tell  me,  tell  me  !  " 
Alas,  I  have  not  his  power  of  glancing  through  a 
man  as  through  a  book. 

That  last  expression  always  delighted  him,  for 
it  justified  his  method  ;  one  of  his  last  happinesses 
was  the  dedication  to  Grosclaude  at  the  beginning 
of  the  book  on  Madagascar.  "  Grosclaude,  a 
Parisian,  a  witty  talker,  and  a  subtle  artist.  He  is 
all  energy  and  does  not  know  his  own  powers.  O 
the  admirable  French  race !  " 

The  war  of  1870  was  a  revelation  to  him;  it 
made  a  man  of  him.  He  realized  this  one  evening 
when  on  guard  in  the  snow;  at  the  same  time  he 
had  his  first  attack  of  pain  and  of  remorse  for  the 
indolence  which  permitted  him  to  sing  and  write 
light  verses  and  current  prose  without  a  serious  or 
durable  life-work.  He  adored  all  military  trap- 
pings ;  the  music  of  regimental  bands  set  him 
aglow  "  like  a  colonel's  horse ;  "  an  officer's  title 
opened  wide  his  door  and  his  heart:  "Those 
who  have   formally  made  a  sacrifice  of  their  life 


Life  and  Literature.  51 

stand  on  a  higher  plane  than  all  other  people." 
One  of  the  few  questions  in  which  he  would  admit 
of  no  alternative  view  was  the  question  of  patriot- 
ism. I  intend  some  day  to  tell  in  a  pamphlet,  a 
special  pamphlet  furnished  with  documents,  what 
his  conduct  was  during  the  Terrible  Year;  accord- 
ing to  him  that  year  was  marked  by  not  only  a 
change  in  himself,  but  a  complete  metamorphosis 
of  the  nation  —  customs,  prejudices  and  culture. 

If  I  spoke  well  of  a  German,  he  lauded  the  liter- 
ature of  Germany  and  murmured  in  a  melancholy 
way  "  Oh,  our  little  fellows  in  their  defeat  I  "  He 
felt  more  keenly  than  anybody  the  disorder  shown 
in  everything  during  that  tragic  epoch.  Owing 
to  our  lack  of  reminiscences  he  desired  that  my 
brother  and  I  should  be  exactly  informed,  so  he 
surrounded  himself  with  all  the  French  and  foreign 
works  which  speak  of  the  Franco-German  war. 
During  our  sojourn  at  Champrosay  this  very  sum- 
mer he  related  to  us  in  detail  his  impressions  and 
his  anguish ;  in  a  way  it  was  his  patriotic  last  will ; 
he  desired  that  the  account  of  the  defence  at 
Chateaudun  should  be  read  and  re-read  in  the  com- 
mon schools. 

His  powers  of  persuasion  were  such  that  he 
fashioned  me  after  his  own  mind,  and  I  saw  that  he 
was  happy  therein.  I  believe  that  he  loved  his 
sons  as  much  as  anybody,  but  without  a  shadow 
of  hesitation  he  would  have  devoted  us  to  the  flag. 
I  made  it  a  reproach  to  him  to  have  never  put  in 
black  and  white  that  analysis  of  our  disasters 
which  he   alone  was  capable  of  writing;    but  he 


52  Alphonse  Daudet. 

shook  his  head :  "  One  cannot  elevate  souls  by 
such  a  story;  for  a  warlike  country  like  our  own 
it  is  necessary  to  sound  the  clarions  of  victory." 

One  admirable  thing  about  him  —  this  man  who 
had  done  his  entire  duty  always  modestly  held  his 
tongue  about  it;  but  the  wound  never  healed. 
When  Madame  Adam  came  to  see  him  the  talk  fell 
naturally  enough  upon  revenge  ;  my  dear  patroness 
and  he  were  not  afraid  of  anything.  He  was 
proud  to  learn  that  our  army  on  the  first  line 
seemed  absolutely  ready :  "  I  have  never  doubted 
the  right  intentions  of  any  one.  Our  governors  are 
in  error  when  they  accept  humiliations.  And  yet, 
after  all  is  said  ,  .  .  who  knows  ?  .  .  .  There  's  the 
grand  mystery,  .  ,  ,    Where  is  the  leader?  .  ,  .  " 

I  can  say  that  his  last  days  were  darkened  by 
the  Dreyfus  affair.  "  I  saw  Bazaine,"  he  repeated, 
anguish  in  his  face,  "  I  saw  Fort  Montrouge  after 
the  treason,  the  distress  and  sad  horror  of  the 
brave  men  who  caused  themselves  to  be  killed  next 
day,"  Eager  as  he  was  in  favor  of  justice,  anxious 
as  he  was  that  every  creature  should  have  his 
rights  and  clever  as  he  was  to  unravel  the  threads 
of  intrigue,  he  could  never  reconcile  himself  to  the 
idea  that  a  nation  might  be  disorganized  intention- 
ally, certainly  not  without  immediate  and  striking 
proofs.  The  man  who  sells  his  own  country 
seemed  to  him  unworthy  of  any  pity  whatever. 
On  the  morning  of  the  catastrophe  I  promised  him 
that  Rochefort  would  come  in  person  to  confirm 
him  in  his  certainty.  The  idea  of  the  visit  de- 
lighted him,  because  he  much  admired  the  great 


Life  and  Literature.  53 

pamphleteer  and  recognized  in  him  a  unique  gift 
of  observation  analogous  to  the  divining  power  of 
Drumont. 

"  Unquestionably  that  comes  from  his  long  exile. 
He  looks  at  and  judges  things  from  afar,  but  he 
has  scented  the  needs  of  our  interests." 

He  had  that  power  of  scenting  things  out,  him- 
self, although  he  disdained  the  actual  politics  of 
social  clowns  and  phrasemongers.  His  opinion 
on  this  question  is  expressed  in  a  chapter  of  his 
last  novel  Sontien  de  Famille :  "It  is  through 
the  lobbies  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  that  the 
blood  of  France  is  being  lost."  But  what  irritated 
him  more  than  anything  else  was  the  bad  faith 
shown  by  parties  and  their  universal  hypocrisy. 

No  one  better  than  he  has  described  "the  plat- 
form effects  and  gestures  and  rhetoric  of  second- 
class  actors,"  all  that  macaronic  verbiage  which 
makes  up  the  conjugation  of  the  word  "  to  govern." 
If  there  ever  was  a  man  in  the  world  who  loved  the 
populace  with  a  real  and  unaffected  love,  it  was  he. 
I  recall  our  walks  in  Paris  on  the  first  national  fes- 
tivals of  the  14th  of  July  (we  were  then  living  in 
the  Marais),  his  happiness  at  the  sight  of  the  ban- 
ners and  women  in  their  Sunday  clothes  and 
radiant  men  carrying  their  boys  on  their  shoulders. 
He  fraternized  with  everybody,  offered  people 
drinks,  extolled  the  good  looks  of  the  children 
"  whom  his  long  hair  caused  to  laugh."  "  Do  you 
see  that  gown?"  said  one  of  them,  "for  a  month 
now  father  has  been  talking  about  it  with  mother ; 
they  have  cut  into  the  money  for  the  household 


54  Alphonse  Daudet. 

and  quarrelled  with  the  old  parents ;  you  may  just 
believe  it  is  a  big  thing !  " 

He  was  touched  by  their  round-eyed  looks  of 
greed  before  the  shop  fronts.  He  emptied  his 
purse  in  buying  toys ;  the  value  of  the  gift  was 
increased  a  hundredfold  by  the  adroitness  of  its 
presentation  and  by  his  charm. 

One  of  his  dreams  was  to  write  an  anecdotal 
history  of  the  Commune,  all  the  more  impartial 
because  he  made  excuses  for  the  madness  of  that 
day :  "  I  partook  of  that  madness  "  said  he ;  "I 
left  Paris  when  they  wanted  to  put  me  in  the  ranks 
and  when  the  crazy  leaders  exasperated  me.  I 
reached  Versailles ;  but  there  again  I  found,  in  an 
inverted  way,  once  more  the  same  cruel  delirium, 
the  same  injustice,  the  same  eyes  of  hate  —  but 
without  the  excuse  of  misery  and  hunger.  I  under- 
stood then  that,  at  the  risk  of  death,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  hold  oneself  apart  from  each  one  of 
those  camps." 

During  those  terrible  years  how  often  did  we 
have  ourselves  taken  to  the  outskirts  of  the  city ! 
He  was  excited  by  the  movement  of  the  crowd  of 
an  evening  toward  Belleville,  by  the  sparkling  eat- 
ing houses,  the  push-carts,  the  quick  succession  of 
faces  and  of  attitudes  of  people  at  work.  One  of 
his  most  perfect  satisfactions  consisted  in  that 
popular  edition  of  his  works  which  his  friend  and 
former  school  comrade  Fayard  made  an  actuality. 
He  trembled  with  delight  while  turning  over  the 
leaves  of  the  little  pamphlets  for  two  sous  apiece, 
which  placed  his  works  within  reach  of  those  com- 


Life  and  Literature.  55 

mon  folk  whose  wretchedness  he  understood  so 
well. 

Just  here  I  wish  to  insist  upon  one  of  the  finest 
qualities  in  my  father.  Though  favored  by  suc- 
cess he  never  sought  it  in  a  vulgar  fashion ;  "  big 
editions  "  surprised  him,  but  did  not  turn  his  head. 
I  have  never  known  any  one  who  disdained  money 
as  much  as  he.  Extremely  and  uncommonly  plain 
in  his  daily  life,  an  enemy  of  luxury  and  show, 
touchingly  simple  in  his  dress,  his  household  and 
his  manners,  he  considered  wealth  the  most  dan- 
gerous trap  so  far  as  morals  are  concerned,  a  well 
of  corruption  at  which  he  who  drinks  poisons  him- 
self, and  the  usual  cause  for  the  breaking  up  of 
families  and  for  hatreds  among  relations  and  in 
society. 

"  The  infamy  of  gold ;  "  it  was  described  and 
foretold  by  Balzac  the  sublime,  whose  literary 
work,  constantly  overheated  and  overstrained,  ap- 
pears to  me  as  the  poem  of  Covetousness.  It  is 
true  that  he  has  not  made  use  of  either  gnomes  or 
giants  as  Wagner  has  in  order  to  express  the 
power  of  the  precious  metal ;  but  he  shows  none 
the  less  its  legendary  force  when  he  generalizes 
the  tortures  and  shames  and  infamies  that  spring 
from  it,  when  he  makes  special  mention  of  the 
faces  and  grimaces,  noting  those  words  which  are 
sharply  defined  and  carved  upon  the  live  flesh. 
"  Gold  cannot  give  any  of  the  radical  happinesses, 
those  which  are  primordial  and  true ;  no,  not  one ! 
On  the  contrary  it  controverts  nature,  carves  wrin- 
kles and  digs  bogs ;  it  tears  to  pieces  and  corrupts. 


56  Alphonse  Daudet. 

Economists  state  that  gold  circulates  —  yes,  like 
alcohol  and  opium,  making  the  one  it  may  inspire 
cowardly  or  crazy,  bringing  him  whom  it  raises  up 
low  in  the  mire,  heaping  itself  up  only  in  order 
to  bring  ruin,  and  accumulating  itself  only  in  the 
interest  of  vice. 

"  Power  and  interest,  and  how  they  trouble 
human  passions  —  that  is  the  Hell  of  the  Magician 
to  whom  we  owe  so  many  masterpieces.  As  if  it 
were  an  alcohol  distilled  from  gold,  it  makes  us 
drunk,  drowning  out  heart  and  brain, 

"  Whenever  I  pass  by  some  magnificent  mansion, 
a  residence  or  castle,  a  park  with  gleaming  waters, 
I  ask  myself  what  sorrow  and  what  unhappiness  all 
that  may  conceal."  He  believed  that  in  literature 
a  quick  success  and  money  are  bad  things,  leading 
the  artist  aside  from  his  true  path,  which  is  to  per- 
fect himself  according  to  his  individual  nature  in 
response  to  his  own  conscience,  without  any  pros- 
pect of  pecuniary  gain. 

But  this  is  what  preoccupied  him  before  every- 
thing else :  the  author's  responsibility,  "  Our 
period  is  playing  in  a  terrible  manner  with  the 
forces  of  print,  which  are  worse  than  explosives," 
One  day  I  discovered  in  one  of  his  little  note- 
books a  list  of  the  social  injustices,  the  principal 
wrongs  which  should  be  fought  against.  "  I  drew 
it  up,"  he  confessed  to  me,  "  with  an  idea  to  supply 
subjects  for  books.  Now  if  there  is  one  thing 
which  is  consoling,  it  is  that  over  against  every 
wrong  there  rises  up  a  feeble  —  true,  a  very  feeble, 
attempt  at  reparation.     Now  it  is  a  threat,  now  a 


Life  and  Literature.  57 

simple  outcry.  Notwithstanding  the  universality 
of  egotism,  there  are  ears  for  the  greater  part  of 
scandals  which  grow  too  great.  Unfortunately 
pitying  humanity  is  possessed  of  narrow  resources 
and  cannot  be  present  everywhere  at  the  same 
time." 

Then  he  came  back  to  the  policy  of  "  phrase- 
mongers," who,  instead  of  taking  up  their  time 
solely  in  making  social  wrongs  less  severe,  interest 
themselves  in  nothing  except  the  ballot-box. 
"  Some  one  little  improvement  every  day  "  —  that 
ought  to  be  their  motto !  But  little  do  they 
occupy  themselves  with  such  works ! 

So  you  may  easily  guess  that  he  was  a  liberal 
and  indeed  the  most  liberal  of  minds,  although 
still  ever  attached  to  tradition.  But  a  parliament- 
ary label  would  have  been  just  as  insupportable  to 
him  as  a  literary  label.  Only  he  did  show  indigna- 
tion when  people  accused  him  of  having  smutched 
the  memory  of  his  former  patron,  the  Due  de 
Morny :  "  I  had  no  connection  at  all  with  public 
affairs,  I  simply  occupied  a  sinecure  as  a  man  of 
letters.  I  am  certain  that  I  never  wrote  one  line 
in  Le  Nabab  which  could  have  been  disliked  by 
the  duke  during  his  lifetime." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  Le  Nabab  is  a  historical 
novel  without  coarse  colors  and  without  invective. 
The  outline  of  Mora  is  drawn  with  discretion  and 
no  little  grandeur.  When  he  dealt  with  him,  my 
father  always  represented  that  statesman  with  all 
his  elegant  and  sinuous  grace,  respecting  in  him 
the  "  connoisseur  of  men."     "  At  that  period  I  was 


58  Alphojise  Daudet. 

quite  as  careless  and  fantastic  of  brain  as  the 
greater  part  of  my  contemporaries.  Though  it  was 
merely  a  suspicion  of  the  terrible  and  grim  things 
which  were  preparing,  I  had  nothing  more  than  a 
poet's  shudder  when  listening  to  La  Belle  HHhte 
in  which  the  insulted  gods  of  Olympus  and  the 
shrill  sound  of  Offenbach's  violin  bow  seemed  to 
me  a  forecast  of  the  catastrophe. 

"  But  what  catastrophe?  I  did  not  know.  Yet 
I  went  back  to  my  room  troubled  and  anxious,  as 
one  feels  when  leaving  some  unwholesome  atmos- 
phere.    A  few  months  later  I  understood." 

I  have  heard  many  conversations  concerning 
those  most  significant  times.  The  most  striking 
were  talks  with  Auguste  Brachet,  author  of 
L'ltalie  qu'on  voit  et  riialie  git  on  ne  voit pas,  one 
of  those  men  for  whom  my  father  felt  the  very 
liveliest  esteem.  "  I  may  be  able  to  see  individ- 
uals and  discern  the  motives  for  their  action,  but 
Brachet  judges  the  masses,  nations  and  national 
events  with  an  unrivalled  sagacity.  Listen  atten- 
tively to  him  and  profit  by  him  !  You  have  before 
you  one  of  the  finest  brains  of  modern  times  !  " 

I  did  listen,  and  profited.  This  took  place  at  the 
Lamalou  Baths  where  Brachet  was  taking  the 
waters  for  neuralgic  pains.  The  two  friends  were 
never  apart.  The  links  in  the  chain  of  memories 
were  evoked  one  after  the  other.  Those  were 
wonderful  hours !  The  author  of  L'ltalie,  which 
was  a  prophetic  work  in  its  way  and  roused  so 
many  hatreds,  had  in  preparation  a  great  work, 
which  ought  to  be  near  publication,  on  the   Com- 


Life  and  Literature.  59 

parative  Psychology  of  the  Europeans.  He  "  talked" 
the  main  chapters  in  our  presence  with  a  glow 
like  that  of  Diderot,  with  a  lucidity,  power  and 
erudition  that  dazzled  us.  He  was  a  teacher 
of  the  Empress  Eugenie  and  "  showed  up "  the 
Tuileries  and  society,  the  actors  and  their  surround- 
ings in  sharpest  relief  after  the  manner  of  Hogarth. 

I  hope  that  from  all  these  details,  which  are  often 
difficult  to  classify,  the  reader  extracts  this  clear 
idea  —  that  Alphonse  Daudet  wrote  his  books  with 
the  very  sap  of  the  human  tree. 

A  form  of  foolishness  one  constantly  meets  is 
to  compare  realism  to  photography.  Every 
organism  has  its  own  angle  of  refraction  which  is 
much  more  complicated  than  that  of  an  objective 
glass ;  my  father's  organism  was  one  of  the  most 
delicate  and  most  impressionable  materials  in 
which  the  outer  world  could  possibly  refract  itself. 

His  ear  had  a  delicacy  and  correctness  most 
exquisite.  At  a  dinner-table  with  twenty  present 
he  could  make  out  conversations  though  they  were 
held  in  a  low  voice.  He  caught  even  the  silly  talk 
of  children.  The  slightest  noises  in  nature  im- 
pressed themselves  upon  him  and  delighted  him. 
Thence  came  his  passion  for  music  which  was 
made  an  aid  and  assistance  to  his  labors. 

He  sits  at  his  table  in  his  working  room.  My 
mother  is  at  the  piano  in  the  next  room  and  the 
music  of  Mozart,  Beethoven,  Schumann  or  Schu- 
bert follov/s,  one  after  the  other,  and  excites  or 
calms  the  imagination  of  the  writer.  "  Music  is 
another  planet."     "  I    adore  all    music,  the  com- 


6o  Alphonse  Datidet. 

monest  as  well  as  the  loftiest."  But  no  man  could 
analyze  and  understand  better  the  masters  of 
harmony,  no  man  lauded  the  genius  of  Wagner  in 
more  splendid  terms  or  more  brilliant  images: 
"The  conquest  by  Wagner  and  the  philosophers." 

When  he  went  to  a  concert  his  eyes  were  wet 
with  tears,  so  lively  was  his  emotion.  I  could  feel 
him  trembling  from  head  to  foot.  His  auditory 
memory  had  no  limits.  With  what  a  delicate 
and  penetrating  voice  did  he  not  hum  the  airs  of 
his  own  country  and  of  all  countries  ! 

Beautiful  lines  made  more  beautiful  by  sounds 
induced  in  him  a  gentle  melancholy.  In  former 
years  Raoul  Pugno,  Bizet,  Massenet,  men  whom 
he  admired  and  cherished,  and  during  the  later 
years  Hahn,  were  real  enchanters  for  him.  The 
melodies  by  his  "  little  Hahn  "  which  he  caused  to 
be  played  three  times  in  succession  —  Hahn,  so 
precocious  in  genius,  so  learned  and  so  free  from 
pettiness,  so  lucid  and  gently  sensual  —  positively 
put  him  in  an  ecstasy.  Seated  in  his  big  arm- 
chair he  half  closed  his  eyes  while  his  nervous 
hand  clasped  the  knob  of  his  cane ;  his  half- 
opened  lips  seemed  to  drink  in  the  sound. 

I  perceive  him  farther  back  in  my  memory  at 
the  Exposition  of  1878,  listening  to  the  gypsies, 
a  glass  of  Tokay  before  him,  encouraging  the 
cries  of  "bravo"  that  resounded  in  their  honor 
and  quite  carried  away  by  the  music  !  Then  it  is 
Venice.  The  lapping  of  the  water,  the  sound  of 
violins  and  human  voices  rise  from  the  dusky 
canal.     He  himself  is  no  longer  with  us ;  he  is  off 


Life  and  Literature.  6i 

travelling  through  the  land  of  imagination  in  com- 
pany with  his  youth  and  manly  vigor  and  hopes. 
When  that  music  ceases,  another  begins  —  music 
which  proceeds  from  him  and  celebrates  the  games 
of  the  wave  and  of  the  night,  and  those  polished 
marbles  which  live  again  in  memory. 

And  so  always  in  the  hours  of  intimate  inter- 
course he  seems  to  me  the  same  person,  whether 
he  may  be  asking  questions  of  his  learned  friend 
Leon  Pillaut  on  violins  and  old  refrains,  on  the 
guimbarde,  the  alto  and  the  hautbois,  or  listen- 
ing in  a  grassy  plain  of  Provence  to  the  mystery 
of  the  pastoral  pipe,  making  the  passers-by  stop 
their  carts,  or  else  enjoying  in  the  garden  at 
Champrosay  the  endless  gamut  of  bird-notes, 
which  regulated  for  him  the  hours  of  spring. 

His  eyes,  which  short-sightedness  really  sharp- 
ened, though  he  pretended  that  they  were  no  good 
for  painting  or  the  plastic  arts,  perceived  color  and 
form  with  the  greatest  liveliness  notwithstanding. 
He  was  one  of  the  very  first  to  appreciate  the 
Impressionists. 

As  to  masters  of  painting,  naturally  his  prefer- 
ences went  out  to  the  realists,  to  the  Hollanders 
and  notably  to  Rembrandt,  and  to  the  French 
school  made  famous  by  Troyon,  Rousseau,  Millet 
and  a  score  of  others.  He  liked  to  recall  delight- 
ful hours  passed  with  his  friends  Bague  and 
Gouvet.  The  picture-seller  Bague  delighted  him 
with  his  robust  merry-making  eloquence,  in  which 
true  touches  of  artistic  fervor  played  hither  and 
thither,  all  warmed  up  with  slang.     I  remember 


62  Alp  house  Daudet. 

one  entire  day  passed  in  turning  over  Goya's  etch- 
ings; he  uttered  at  the  time  many  radical  truths 
concerning  sincerity,  the  excess  and  paroxysm  of 
which  become  cruelty;  on  the  combination  of 
grandeur  and  minuteness  which  is  a  distinctive 
feature  in  the  bull-fight  series ;  on  the  crude  power 
of  shadow  and  of  light;  on  the  particular  disorder 
in  military  and  artistic  matters  during  that  epoch; 
on  the  morbid  drying-up,  the  Etruscan  angles  and 
the  "  voluptuous  twist  "  found  in  Spain.  As  it  was 
a  matter  of  the  South,  it  was  easy  for  him  to  read 
these  Spanish  riddles ;  at  first  sight  he  deciphered 
for  us  the  fantastic  "  Proverbs"  and  "  Dreams." 

The  conversation  ended  with  a  picture  of  that 
frenzy  which  is  particular  to  the  peoples  of  the 
lands  of  the  sun  —  the  sun,  "that  alcohol  of  the 
South !  " 

During  our  stay  in  London  he  remained  for 
many  hours  seated  in  the  British  Museum  before 
the  Furies  and  the  Friezes  of  the  Parthenon : 

"  Don't  you  find  that  a  magnificent  music  dis- 
engages itself  from  these  groups?  'Reality  and 
poetry  '  —  of  a  truth  there  is  nothing  else  beside. 
Those  old  peoples  copied  nature.  Nature  was 
dancing  in  that  blue  air.  No  separation  between 
the  exterior  world  and  the  world  within ;  no  one 
shaken  by  desire ;  never  a  lack  of  harmony ! 
Whenever  there  is  a  rhythm  anywhere  it  seems 
there  must  have  also  been  some  happy  inspira- 
tion." 

"And  how  as  to  sorrow,  father?  " 

"  Sorrow  did  not  put  discord  into  the  human 


Life  and  Literature,  63 

being.  The  latter  did  not  raise  a  revolution 
against  it.     It  did  not  foment  disorder." 

The  idea  that  the  figures  on  these  friezes  might 
become  violent  like  true  daughters  of  the  North, 
might  become  Valkyrs,  brought  him  to  talk  of 
Wagner's  brain,  in  which  two  forms  of  beauty 
fought  for  empire.  One,  to  a  certain  degree  im- 
movable and  in  equilibrium,  having  very  gentle 
waves,  being  near  of  kin  to  the  ideal  of  the  Greeks ; 
the  other  having  a  furious  form,  the  boiling  well- 
spring  of  the  Saxon  race. 

It  is  mere  laziness  of  the  imagination  to  divide 
intellectual  men  into  classes  of  analysts  and  syn- 
theticists  according  to  their  works  or  their  speech. 
Alphonse  Daudet  was  in  search  of  original  causes 
and  he  triumphed  in  giving  details,  but  instinct 
warned  him  of  the  exact  place  where  too  great 
division  would  have  dissolved  and  ruined  every- 
thing. Work  offered  itself  to  him  as  a  whole ;  he 
admired  it  in  the  mass.  A  lover  of  right  propor- 
tions and  of  exact  measure  (he  himself  used  as 
a  motto  for  himself:  Ne  quid  nimis)  there  was 
nothing  of  the  miniaturist  about  him.  He  saw 
things  in  a  big  way,  nor  did  he  reason  or  discuss 
matters  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  so  doing.  He 
respected  deeply  every  kind  of  emotion.  Quar- 
rels over  words  wearied  him,  just  as  those  ora- 
torical games  in  which  each  participant  decides  a 
matter  according  to  his  particular  temperament 
without  the  slightest  regard  to  the  opinions  of 
others.  Whatever  superficial  critics,  led  astray  by 
his  monocle  and  his  conscientiousness,  may  say  in 


64  Alphonse  Daudet. 

this  regard,  he  had  no  use  for  the  microscope  in 
his  work. 

The  best  proof  of  this  is  a  hatred  of  what  people 
have  agreed  to  call "  art  for  art's  sake."  He  re- 
peated this  formula  with  a  look  of  astonishment  on 
his  face,  for  there  was  no  one  who  was  less  ready 
to  admit  catch-words  in  conversation  Insincerity 
made  him  yawn ;  "  whatever  has  not  roots  in  actu- 
ality is  dead.  Heavens,  I  know  well  enough  the 
apology  they  make  for  artifice !  Baudelaire  in- 
vented that  to  use  as  a  weapon,  out  of  pure  hatred 
for  fools  and  fat  citizens.  Nothing  ages  so,  nothing 
loses  its  grip  so  quickly  as  what  is  unusual.  '  Les 
fleiirs  du  mal,'  '  Les  petit  pohnes  en  prose '  are 
marvels  and  the  quintessence  of  truth ;  they  are 
precious  poems  plucked  from  the  very  depths  of 
the  moral  soil.  But  the  imitators  of  a  fad  were 
foolish  enough  to  imagine  that  they  also  could 
build  and  inhabit  the  '  kiosque  en  marqiieterie '  of 
which  Sainte-Beuve  speaks.     What  an  error !  " 

If  he  loved  to  put  himself  in  contact  with  poems, 
if  he  excelled  in  the  faculty  of  reading  the  most 
lowly  characters  and  classifying  all  the  movements 
of  the  mind,  all  habits  and  functional  "  creases," 
yet  did  he  also  delight  in  solitude :  "  Where  the 
form  of  observation,  the  vision  of  the  poet  and  the 
nicety  of  mind  in  the  author  concentrate  and  pu- 
rify themselves."  In  his  agitated  youth  when  he 
began  to  be  anxious  concerning  his  spiritual  and 
physical  health  he  made  some  veritable  "  retreats." 
He  went  and  shut  himself  up  in  a  mas  of  the 
Camargue,  a  big  farm,  and  even  went  to  stay  in 


Life  and  Literature.  65 

the  lighthouse  on  the  Sanguinaires :  "  The  two 
lighthouse  men,  forced  to  live  side  by  side,  loathed 
each  other;  one  copy  of  Plutarch  all  marked  up 
by  their  great  clumsy  fingers  constituted  the  li- 
brary, O  Shakespeare !  and  filled  these  simple 
imaginations  with  the  murmur  of  battles  and  of 
heroism  similar  to  that  of  the  moaning  sea.  The 
useful  shine  of  the  revolving  lantern  in  the  tower 
lured  thither  reckless  birds  which  dashed  their 
brains  out  against  the  enormous  glass  lens.  The 
keepers  made  soup  of  their  bodies.  If  a  storm 
did  not 'bellow,*  the  revictualling  boat  would  bring 
us  once  a  week  ancient  news  and  fresh  preserves. 
Fine  hours  have  I  passed  there  —  sometimes,  'tis 
true,  slow,  sorrowful  and  anguished;  but  they 
were  hours  in  which  I  took  stock  of  myself  and 
judged  myself,  and  listened  there  to  other  storms 
beside  those  of  the  ocean.  Lucky  are  they  whom 
necessity  suddenly  separates  from  the  social  gulf 
and  who  find  themselves  in  the  presence  of  their 
own  self!  People  will  never  know  how  much 
exile  added  to  the  greatness  of  Hugo  and  Voltaire, 
how  the  prison  of  Blanqui  increased  and  enlarged 
his  dream  !  " 

After  a  silence  he  added :  "  And,  going  into 
that  solitude,  which  one  of  the  men  of  a  single 
book,  imitis  libri,  which  would  I  carry  with  me? 
Montaigne  or  Pascal?  Or  would  I  cheat  and  take 
an  anthology  of  the  masters  of  prose,  or  the  sub- 
lime literature  of  Taine,  or  the  Plutarch  of  my 
lighthouse  men?  A  constant  interchange  of 
thought  goes    on   between  that  one   book  of  his 

5 


66  Alphonse  Daudei. 

and  the  isolated  man  who  is  a  thinker.  It  forms 
a  library,  an  encyclopedia,  which  the  movements 
of  the  solitary  one's  soul  engraft  upon  what  is 
printed ;  and  the  soul  boils  up  again  because  of 
that  which  is  printed.  Double  offspring,  starting 
from  the  germ  of  the  story  of  Hamlet!  slender 
pamphlet  for  a  bookseller  and  for  Hamlet's 
author !  When  I  was  living  with  the  Essays 
as  my  Bible  there  was  not  one  of  my  dreams  for 
which  I  did  not  get  from  them  an  answer  and 
comfort." 

As  head  of  the  family  he  was  forced  to  renounce 
his  love  of  solitude,  for  we  never  parted  from  each 
other;  but  my  mother  always  did  something  to 
satisfy  that  love  of  the  country  which  he  kept  so 
vividly  alive  down  to  his  last  moments. 

That  delightful  valley  of  Champrosay  which 
played  such  a  great  role  in  our  life  stretches  in 
reality  from  Juvisy  to  Corbeil  along  the  curvings 
of  the  Seine  and  the  corresponding  caprice  of  the 
woods  of  Senart.  We  inhabited  successively  three 
houses  on  the  right  bank,  one  of  which  had  be- 
longed to  Eugene  Delacroix.  It  is  the  village 
and  forest  bank  open  like  a  cornice  to  the  sun, 
warm  and  healthful,  and  moreover  sown  with 
historical  castles,  Soisy-sous-Etiolles,  Lagrange, 
Grosbois,  which  recall  the  17th  century,  the  Revo- 
lution and  the  Empire,  The  left  bank,  toward 
Montlhery  and  Iitampes,  traversed  by  the  acque- 
duct  of  the  Vanne,  brings  back  memories  partly 
similar,  partly  much  older.  Some  villages  belong 
to  the  I2th  century. 


Life  and  Literature.  67* 

Formerly  my  father  loved  to  boat  with  his 
neighbors,  Gustave  Droz  and  Leon  Pillaut,  with 
his  friends  Gonzague  Privot  and  Armand  Syl- 
vestre,  particularly  with  his  brother-in-law  Allard ; 
he  passed  his  life  on  the  Seine  and  frequented  the 
taverns  of  coachmen  and  carters,  rowing  up  those 
pretty  by-streams  which  lose  themselves  in  private 
properties,  shady  parks,  or  factories :  "  Once  we 
came  to  so  narrow  a  little  branch  and  so  shallow 
that  we  had  to  disembark  and  carry  the  *  KxXk.- 
sienne '  on  my  shoulders ;  lo  and  behold,  we  are 
in  a  garden ;  a  young  girl,  very  much  surprised, 
raises  her  head  from  her  book  and  sees  us  both 
before  her,  your  uncle  and  me,  very  much  like  the 
red  Indians  of  Fenimore  Cooper,  loaded  down 
with  the  boat  and  rudder,  the  oars  and  the  boat- 
hook." 

At  that  time,  too,  he  was  wont  to  scour  the 
woods  for  mushrooms  and  chestnuts.  He  was 
proud  of  knowing  the  proper  sort  and  distinguish- 
ing the  good  mushrooms  with  ends  like  tulle.  He 
pranced  about  through  the  bushes  with  me  on  his 
shoulders,  dragging  my  mother  after  him.  In  the 
evening  we  devoured  the  gleanings  of  our  harvest. 

He  told  us  how  during  a  wrestling  match  with 
the  sculptor  Zachary  Astruc,  whose  independence 
and  robust  talent  he  admired,  he  had  broken  his 
leg.  He  was  carried  home  groaning  and  feverish 
and  particularly  preoccupied  with  a  fear  that  his 
comrade  would  be  blamed.  That  very  summer's 
night,  which  was  heavy  and  stormy,  the  news- 
papers brought  a  terrible  piece  of  news:   declara- 


68  Alpkonse  Daudet. 

tion  of  the  Franco-German  war.  He  had  but  one 
idea  after  that :  get  himself  healed  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible and  be  in  shape  to  help  his  country.  "  Hor- 
rible and  stupefying  period,  during  which  every 
courier  announced  a  defeat  and  the  countenances 
of  the  peasants  reflected  fear  and  meanness," 
Finally  he  was  on  his  feet  again,  capable  of  hold- 
ing a  gun ! 

Later  on  the  state  of  his  health  no  longer  per- 
mitted him  anything  more  than  walks  down  the 
alleys  of  that  great  park  which  all  our  friends 
know.  There  is  not  a  bench,  there  is  not  a  slope 
which  lacks  a  memory  of  my  beloved.  On  my 
arm  or  on  that  of  my  brother  his  gait  was  alert  and 
rapid.  He  would  not  stop  except  to  light  his  little 
pipe,  as  clever  as  a  herdsman  of  the  Camargue 
plains  to  get  the  better  of  wind  and  dust,  delighting 
in  "  nice  little  warm  shelters,"  interesting  himself 
in  flowers,  in  garden  plots,  in  vegetables,  happy  of 
the  slightest  embellishment  and  delighted  to  show 
off  "  his  domain." 

It  was  there  one  should  have  seen  and  heard 
him,  excited  by  the  great  "  out-of-doors,"  watch- 
ing the  play  of  light,  listening  to  the  songs  of 
birds,  the  singing  of  the  cricket  and  the  rustling 
of  the  leaves.  He  improvised  extraordinary 
stories  for  my  very  young  son,  his  little  Charles, 
and  for  my  sister  Edmee,  stories  in  which  every- 
tliing  about  us  played  its  part — magical,  delight- 
ful tales  which  placed  the  beauty  of  things  in 
nature  on  a  level  with  those  budding  intellects, 
moved  them  and  held  them  attentive  to  the  point 


Life  and  Literature.  69 

of  closing  their  eyes  in  order  to  enjoy  the  feast  all 
the  more. 

There  is  the  secret  pulsation  of  his  genius :  In  a 
few  exact  and  a  few  simple  images,  the  objects 
corresponding  to  which  are  near  to  us,  he  touches 
our  soul.  There  is  the  word  and  there  lies  the 
object.  Even  grains  of  sand  and  sticks  of  wood 
and  bark  he  rendered  animate.  He  would  say 
that  that  insect  had  carried  off  the  end  of  his 
story  and  in  order  to  pursue  the  robber  he  would 
stick  his  glass  in  his  eye.  In  these  little  games 
thus  organized,  while  little  hands  pressed  his 
hands  and  the  "  Thank  you.  Papa,"  "  Thank  you, 
Grandpapa,"  resounded  —  in  these  homelike  and 
fairylike  pictures  one  finds  again  his  subtle  and 
simple  art  with  its  thousand  delicate  shades,  like  to 
one  of  those  flowers  whose  fragrance  lends  balmi- 
ness  to  the  air. 

When  the  heat  of  the  day  lessened  we  would 
take  a  drive  in  the  family  landau.  My  mother 
has  a  pronounced  taste  for  things  of  the  past. 
She  points  out  many  an  ancient  residence  such 
as  that  home  of  Mme.  de  Beaumont  at  Savigny 
which  the  grass  and  mosses  are  slowly  invading. 
Autumn  is  the  finest  season  here;  across  the 
broad  plain  one  sees  the  fires  of  the  rubbish 
heaps.  My  father  expresses  his  longing  for  hap- 
piness:  "An  old  mansion  broad  and  somewhat 
low,  with  an  extension  consisting  of  farmhouse 
and  poultry  yard.  In  the  hearths  the  crackling 
wood  of  the  pruned  vines.  A  few  selected  friends 
and  the  snow  outside.     Absolute  and  tender  con- 


70  Alphonse  Daudet, 

fidence  among  all  present.     Chats  and  delightful 
readings  aloud.     The  old  people  are  not  morose, . 
the  young  are  neither  pedantic  nor  bitter.     Life  is 
one  delight." 

In  one  of  his  last  letters  received  at  Grenoble 
whilst  I  was  serving  with  the  Alpine  regiment  he 
wrote  to  me :  "  Fancy  to  yourself  one  of  those 
delightful  '  artist  consolers,'  such  as  I  have 
dreamed  of  being  myself,  dwelling  in  some  old 
property  near  the  gates  of  a  little  town  with  ram- 
parts and  mall,  passing  two  months  in  Paris,  a 
few  weeks  on  the  Nile  or  in  Spitzbergen,  but  at 
last  getting  tired  of  running  about  and  then  find- 
ing his  completest  pleasure  in  a  few  roomfuls  of 
friends,  crowded  on  the  traditional  days  of  the 
calendar  year  —  Christmas,  New  Year's,  St,  John's 
Day,  Thanksgiving  Day.  Such  a  man  as  that 
might  print  a  book  consisting  of  numberless 
volumes  embodying  our  very  best  society.  He 
could  put  at  the  close  of  the  last  volume  pub- 
lished *  to  continue  '  and  then  the  *  Book  of  Life,' 
or  the  'Science  of  Life  '  would  be  under  way." 

In  the  chapter  entitled  "  The  Vendor  of  Hap- 
piness," I  shall  show  what  it  was  he  meant  by 
those  words  "The  Science  of  Life." 

The  intervals  in  the  little  note-books  are  de- 
lightful and  stunning  landscape  pieces.  In  such 
cases,  as  in  others,  he  only  noted  the  domi- 
nant points;  things  that  strike  and  trouble  us  in 
some  spectacle  of  nature  are  hit  off  in  a  few 
precise,  clear  and  vibrating  words,  as  quick  and 
sharp   as  the  impression    of  the    spectacle    itself. 


Life  mid  Literature.  71 

One  day  I  was  turning  over  the  leaves  of  these 
masterpieces  and  said  to  him :  **  You  recall  old 
Hokusaif  to  me  —  old  '  Crazy-for-drawing,'  who 
at  the  end  of  his  life  stated  that  he  almost  under- 
stood the  form  of  living  creatures  and  could  al- 
most fix  line  and  point  as  they  should  be." 

He  answered :  "  I  have  not  reached  that  point. 
How  bitter  it  is  to  me,  this  gap  between  that 
which  my  pen  sets  down  and  that  which  my  soul 
has  perceived !  I  suffer  from  the  torture  of  not 
expressing  myself.  How  can  one  render  and  ex- 
press that  swifter  pulsation  in  our  veins  which 
comes  when  one  looks  upon  the  evening  star 
rendered  golden  by  the  autumn,  or  a  little  lake 
upon  which  the  sunlight  separates  itself  into  its 
component  parts,  or  an  horizon  with  beautifully 
pure  lines,  or  a  stormy  sky,  copper-colored  and 
black,  a  dusky  abyss  in  the  midst  of  the  blue 
heavens?  How  express  the  way  in  which  a  mem- 
ory palpitates  at  a  given  hour,  or  tell  what  part 
of  us  it  is  that  lingers  in  things,  what  it  is  in  us 
which  weeps  and  smiles  in  accord  with  them? 
Through  my  lips  how  many  impressions  have 
escaped  which  are  rebellious  to  verbal  forms !  " 

Still,  if  ever  methods  of  work  were  submitted 
to  the  rules  of  natural  law  they  were  his.  In  his 
turbulent  youth  he  never  seated  himself  at  his 
writing-table  except  when  fired  by  his  subject. 
He  stated  that  a  talent  was  an  "  intensity "  of 
life ;   and  his  stories  are  a  proof  of  that  formula. 

Later  on,  through  the  happy  influence  of  his 
"  direct  collaboration  "  he  made  channels  for  and 


72  Alp  house  Daudet. 

regulated  his  wonderful  faculty  as  an  improvisor. 
He  got  the  habit  of  daily  work  and,  as  usually 
happens,  his  brain  became  more  supple  in  re- 
sponse to  the  appeal  and  submitted  to  the  dis- 
cipline. Fromont  Jeune  et  Risler  Ain^,  Jacky 
Le  Nabab,  Les  Rots  en  Exil,  L Evang^liste  were 
so  many  continuous  and  unbending  efforts.  Sum- 
mer or  winter  he  rose  at  an  early  hour  and 
went  at  once  to  work  on  his  task  without  other 
means  of  excitement  than  a  dip  in  cold  water; 
then  he  covered  page  after  page  with  that  little 
close-set,  nervous  and  elegant  handwriting  of  his 
which  his  illness  made  still  more  delicate  with- 
out taking  from  it  any  of  its  attributes.  Many 
a  time  have  I  remarked  upon  the  likeness  of  his 
"  graphic  type  "  to  that  of  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau. 
There  are  the  same  excessively  minute  distinctions, 
the  same  intervals  between  letters  and  words,  the 
same  care  in  punctuation  and  the  same  sharpness 
in  the  handwriting.  The  similarities  are  very 
evident  between  the  handwriting  of  my  father  and 
the  manuscript  of  the  Nouvelle  Htflotse,  which  I 
was  able  to  examine  one  evening  at  the  Chateau 
des  Cretes,  thanks  to  the  kindness  of  Mme.  Arnaud 
de  I'Ariege. 

He  erased  with  courage  and  frequently ;  at  the 
first  blush  a  mere  sketch  served  as  it  were  for  a 
canvas.  My  mother  and  he  then  took  this  "  mon- 
ster" up  again,  expending  the  greatest  pains  on 
its  style  and  bringing  into  relationship  that  har- 
moniousness  and  that  need  to  be  real  which  were 
always  the  writer's  care.     "  Without   my  wife    I 


Life  and  Literature.  73 

should  have  given  myself  up  to  my  facility  for 
writing.  It  was  only  later  that  perfection  tor- 
mented me." 

After  that  slow  and  disagreeable  proving,  the 
third  and  finished  copy  was  made.  Those  whose 
imaginations  are  in  the  state  of  flame  may  readily 
understand  the  peculiar  merit  in  sacrificing  "  go  " 
to  exactness  and  making  enthusiasm  perfect.  In 
my  father's  soul  the  word  itself  was  that  which 
called  the  idea  forth.  In  the  case  of  a  formalist 
like  Baudelaire,  for  instance,  the  word  curtails  and 
reins  in  the  lyrical  results,  it  limits  in  place  of 
rousing  up ;  in  the  case  of  Alphonse  Daudet, 
however,  the  word  excited  an  entire  world  of 
sensation  and  form.  Thus,  the  man  whom  the 
"  word  "  renders  drunk  can  never  know  the  de- 
light of  achievement.  My  father  was  a  Latin 
genius  and  was  the  possessor  of  a  sense  of  pro- 
portion and  of  measure. 

Without  entering  into  the  critic's  domain,  a 
thing  which  would  hardly  suit  my  actual  part,  it 
may  be  permitted  me  to  note  the  constant  evolu- 
tion of  a  temperament  like  my  father's,  a  tempera- 
ment so  virile  and  so  lucid.  His  first  works, 
burning  and  super-abounding  as  they  are,  give 
signs  of  less  anxious  care  than  those  that  came 
after,  so  far  as  nicety  of  language  and  of  equili- 
brium are  concerned.  They  spring  rather  from 
temperament  than  from  character. 

The  traits  which  particularly  belong  to  my  father 
are  a  conciseness  in  rendering  picturesque  motives, 
an  intimate  blending  of  nature  moral  with  nature 


74  Alphonse  Daudet. 

physical,  and  a  disdain  of  useless  ornaments,  to  a 
degree  which  no  one  has  shown  at  a  higher  point, 
not  even  the  greatest  of  writers.  Human  beings 
are  characterized  according  as  they  absorb  sensa- 
tions, think  and  act;  each  type  is  completed  by 
its  own  passions;  no  outside  traits  are  added  to 
overload  the  picture.  Every  brush-mark  tells  its 
story  and  is  harmonious  with  the  whole.  A  book 
by  him  is  of  such  a  kind  that  in  memory  it  follows 
the  very  movements  of  life.  Firm  and  solid  in  its 
expository  parts,  uplifted  as  regards  the  chief 
matter,  it  is  turbulent  in  critical  passages  and 
calm  after  the  close  of  a  crisis. 

Every  person  in  the  book  has  his  or  her  own 
atmosphere,  every  scene  has  its  own  culminating 
point;  the  whole  hurries  toward  a  common  goal. 
The  central  model  is  embellished  by  a  multitude 
of  particular  examples.  Next  comes  that  classic 
power  which  his  contemporaries  themselves  have 
noted,  that  elegant  and  sustained  vigor  which 
preserves  the  work  from  any  sudden  labelling  of 
naturalistic  or  realistic,  and  attaches  it  to  national 
tradition,  to  the  deep-seated  and  harmonious  lit- 
erary heritage  of  our  race. 

The  fact  is  that  labor  does  not  begin  at  the 
moment  when  the  artist  takes  his  pen.  It  begins 
in  sustained  reflection  and  in  the  thought  which 
accumulates  images  and  sifts  them,  garners  and 
winnows  them  out  and  compels  life  to  keep  con- 
trol over  imagination,  and  imagination  to  expand 
and  enlarge  life.  The  heroes  of  those  romances 
and  dramas  of  his,  the  words  of  the  conversations 


Life  and  Literature.  75 

they  hold  and  the  places  they  frequent,  are  not 
products  of  a  super-heated  imagination,  not  parts 
of  the  mind  of  their  creator  which  are,  as  so  often 
happens,  terribly  enlarged  and  diversified  —  the 
bold  impressions  of  one  and  the  same  man  im- 
agining himself  possessed  of  opposite  passions. 
Alphonse  Daudet  was  always  a  portal  wide  open 
and  tremendously  alive  to  the  entrance  of  natural 
phenomena.  His  senses  transmitted  to  his  brain 
the  most  exact,  the  most  generous  and  the  truest 
observations.  His  brain  made  a  choice  among 
them  and  organized  from  them  their  marshalling. 

He  lived  with  the  persons  of  his  book  as  with 
friends.  He  put  them  questions  on  all  sorts  of 
topics  and  listened  to  their  answers.  He  tempted 
them  with  vices  and  virtues  and  followed  the 
working  of  these  ideas  in  their  minds  until  he 
obtained  complete  figures  and  reached  the  myster- 
ious limits  of  the  laughable  and  the  impenetrable. 
He  would  rather  cause  them  to  act  than  to  argue, 
being  by  no  means  ignorant  that  a  truthful  ges- 
ture is  the  immediate  ruin  of  a  thousand  theories 
and  that  a  sudden  change  of  face  is  more  power- 
ful than  the  most  subtle  discussion.  He  knew  that 
characters  betrayed  themselves  through  typical 
phrases  —  that  hybrid  individuals  with  an  oval 
and  undetermined  physiognomy,  who  have  as  it 
were  enfeebled  our  epoch,  nevertheless  do  have 
special  moments  of  a  brilliant  and  determined 
life. 

So  he  granted  to  cowards  occasional  pluckings- 
up  of  courage ;  to  the  bold,  periods  of  weakness ; 


76  Alphonse  Daudet. 

to  the  weak,  moments  of  strength,  and  to  liars, 
impulses  of  truth ;  to  hypocrites,  times  when  masks 
fall ;  to  chatterers,  spells  of  silence ;  to  hide- 
bound persons,  singular  relaxations ;  to  chaste 
people,  low  dreams,  and  to  the  vicious,  ideas  of 
chastity.  He  had  cross-examined  woman  and 
placed  her  in  the  confessional  in  her  various  roles 
as  mother,  wife  and  lover ;  in  her  generosities,  her 
perverse  actions,  her  ordinary  tastes ;  in  her  faults, 
terrors  and  anguish.  He  knew  the  taste  of  every 
sort  of  tear,  he  held  the  key  to  every  sort  of  sor- 
row. No  intricate  path  of  remorse  or  of  regret 
escaped  him. 

He  did  not  fail  even  to  study  the  mirror-like 
and  complex  souls  of  children.  And  over  all  his 
conversations,  over  his  patient  research  and  his 
precise  knowledge  he  cast  the  merciful  cloak 
of  a  philosopher  whom  no  dreadful  spectacle  has 
hardened  and  no  human  horror  has  disgusted  — 
one  who  has  not  grown  weary  of  mankind. 

We  often  used  to  laugh  among  ourselves  at  the 
ease  with  which  some  men  treated  him  amicably 
as  a  "  locust,"  or  "cicada,"  men  who  sum  up  the 
entire  South  of  France  with  a  single  emblem.  In 
many  an  obituary  note,  otherwise  sympathetic  or 
enthusiastic,  I  have  met  with  these  suggestions 
of  "enchanter"  or  "troubadour"  or  "light  poet." 
Nothing  could  be  more  false  than  such  an  idea. 
It  is  true  my  father  was  realist  enough  to  admit 
that  "  gayety"  and  "  charm"  have  also  a  place  in 
existence;  since  nothing  is  uniformly  black  and 
cruel;    but  that  harsh   labor  in  his  own  mind  is 


Life  and  Literature.  77 

badly  expressed  by  a  suggestion  of  legs  scratch- 
ing wings,  of  a  rattling  in  the  sunlight. 

When  we  come  to  publish  in  their  entirety  the 
thoughts  jotted  down  in  his  notebooks,  people 
will  see  with  what  zeal  he  studied  out  for  us  those 
ideas  of  forms  which  are  more  tangible  and  hu- 
man. An  admirably  gifted  poet,  he  was  as  sus- 
picious of  metaphors  as  any  philologist  or  biologist, 
just  as  he  was  suspicious  of  the  slightest  cause  for 
error  in  other  respects. 

He  finds  in  life  an  episode,  a  striking  trait. 
With  a  few  clear  words  he  fixes  it,  and  then  con- 
tinues the  task  begun.  The  first  noting  of  it  over- 
whelms him  with  parallels.  It  may  be  that  it  is 
the  germ  and  the  beginning  of  a  book;  but  this 
book  itself  offers  itself  to  him  from  several  points 
of  view  in  a  way  which  I  cannot  express  better 
than  as  the  attitudes  of  a  living  man.  So,  then, 
it  becomes  a  series  of  sketches  and  more  or  less 
intense  and  exact  drawings,  in  which  the  large 
constructive  lines  are  already  strongly  marked. 

As  ideas  are  thus  associated,  the  moral  ele- 
ments approach  each  other  and  come  together  in 
intimate  union.  Now  the  high  lights  can  be  dis- 
tinguished ;  types,  situations,  portraits  and  conver- 
sations spring  from  two  distinct  origins,  one  of 
them  basic  and  primordial,  the  other  fragmentary, 
altering  day  by  day,  and  always  subject  to  the 
changes  of  fact.  It  forms  a  mulatihe  ^  of  reminis- 
cence and  improvised  additions.     The  being  thus 

^  Name  of  a  suburb  of  Lyon,  but  here  it  probably  stands  for 
mulassiere  or  "  hybrid." 


y8  Alphonse  Daudet. 

metamorphosed  comes  slowly  toward  the  author 
through  the  mist.  What  joy  when  he  feels  that 
he  has  his  model  thoroughly  there  and  needs  to 
work  only  upon  secondary  parts  and  improve- 
ments !  Nevertheless  the  last  selection  is  always 
a  subtle  and  laborious  one. 

Alphonse  Daudet's  mind  was  of  such  a  sort  that 
details  of  his  work  offer  an  abridged  resemblance 
of  the  whole.  That  is  why  his  novel  affects  us 
like  an  hallucination  and  makes  every  reader  a 
witness  to  the  drama. 

Take  Delobelle  as  he  appears  to  us.  From  one 
end  of  his  biography  to  the  other  he  remains  ex- 
actly in  accord  with  his  outline ;  you  will  never 
see  the  hand  or  the  arm  of  the  author.  It  is  the 
same  thing  with  the  Nabob,  Numa,  Bompard,  Paul 
Astier  and  the  others.  This  extraordinary  con- 
tinuousness  in  a  figure  proves  a  complete  assimi- 
lation of  the  author  with  the  character  created. 
His  imagination  has  no  jumps  and  bounds  which 
interfere  with  observation  and  subtract  whatever 
may  be  gained  by  lyrical  liveliness  from  truthful- 
ness to  the  fact. 

That  explains  how  there  comes  to  be,  alongside 
of  the  Daudet  who  writes,  a  Daudet  who  lives  and 
talks;  it  is  necessary  to  leave  the  picture  of  him 
incomplete,  such  as  I  trace  it  here.  That  which 
my  father  did  not  put  in  his  book,  the  overflow  of 
his  brain  which  he  would  have  feared  to  use  as 
surplus  matter,  all  this  unemployed  force  was 
found  again  in  his  conversation  and  his  acts.  The 
tree,  it  is  true,  has  left  immortal  fruit,  but  at  the 


Life  and  Literature.  79 

same  time  sap  was  running  through  its  branches 
and  out  to  their  extremest  points,  to  the  stems  of 
the  leaves  and  flowers. 

I  have  said  that  he  worked  with  tremendous 
vigor;  nevertheless  no  amount  of  work  prevented 
him  from  receiving  a  friend,  aiding  a  comrade,  or 
giving  counsel  to  a  young  man.  My  sudden  run- 
nings into  the  room  did  not  irritate  him.  He 
would  welcome  us  with  a  kind  word  or  a  joke. 
He  took  an  interest  in  the  whole  house,  in  the 
sense  that  every  hour  was  good,  as  far  as  he  was 
concerned.  He  had  no  regular  hours.  From  the 
time  he  ceased  to  go  out  he  passed  his  life  at  his 
table,  reading  or  taking  notes;  summer  or  winter 
he  got  up  at  half-past  seven  and  went  to  bed  at 
eleven  o'clock,  except  on  Thursday,  when  we  kept 
a  longer  watch. 

For  Thursday  was  his  day  of  recreation.  His 
uncommon  amicability  was  the  reason  for  the 
great  pleasure  he  took  in  those  simple  but  most 
interesting  receptions,  at  which  we  saw  in  active 
play  the  most  splendid  intelligences  belonging  to 
our  time.  My  father  enlivened  everything,  started 
and  kept  up  discussions,  warmed  the  timid,  soothed 
the  angry  ones,  put  a  truce  to  hostilities,  softened 
rancors  and  strengthened  sympathies. 

In  the  miserable  drivel  of  a  poor  broken-down 
symbolist,  a  man,  besides,  who  never  knew  him,  I 
have  read  this  strange  statement:  that  Alphonse 
Daudet  could  never  forgive !  In  the  first  place 
he  did  not  know  of  most  of  those  attacks  with 
which  the  young  bald-heads  of  the  small  reviews 


8o  Alphonse  DaudeL 

did  not  fail  to  regale  him ;  and  for  the  very 
good  reason  that  he  did  not  read  them ;  besides, 
even  had  he  read  them,  they  would  at  most 
have  brought  to  his  lips  an  indulgent  smile,  so 
entirely  indifferent  did  such  appreciations  leave 
him.  But  several  of  his  enemies  who  became  his 
sincere  friends  might  bear  witness  to  the  kindliness 
and  ease  of  forgetting  things  which  he  always 
showed   in  literary  discussions. 

"  Most  of  the  time  people  don't  understand  each 
other.  Ferocious  and  time-honored  antipathies 
do  not  stand  a  moment  before  a  few  minutes' 
contact." 

And  although  there  was  a  constellation  of  the 
"  arrived  "  and  of  the  "  illustrious  "  at  those  Thurs- 
day reunions,  there  was  also  no  lack  of  be- 
ginners, because  he  had  a  warm  interest  in  new 
talents.  Uncertain  of  himself,  he  did  not  disdain 
those  obscure  powers  which  announce  themselves 
in  some  writer  of  the  future  and  issue  out  in  over- 
whelming or  paradoxical  words,  in  a  frenzy  of 
criticism  or  of  blind  enthusiasm.  A  great  number 
of  those  who  to-day  hold  the  first  rank  were  in 
their  days  of  beginning  encouraged  and  sustained 
by  him.  What  a  host  of  letters  to  editors,  to 
managers  of  newspapers  and  theatres,  what  a  lot 
of  recommendations  and  notes  of  introduction ! 
"  Alas,"  said  he,  "  I  can  no  longer  use  my  actual 
presence  !  "  He  knew  very  well  the  power  of  his 
own  speech  and  what  the  most  eloquent  letter 
lacks  in  persuasive  gestures  and  accents  of  sin- 
cerity. 


Life  and  Literature.  8i 

That  love  of  youth,  even  in  its  faults  and  vanities, 
was  part  of  his  eager  desire  to  know :  he  wished 
to  see  and  U7iderstand.  An  attitude,  a  grasp  of 
the  hand,  a  look,  a  word  from  a  person  revealed 
more  to  him  than  a  piece  of  verse  or  a  picture. 
He  adored  Plutarch,  who  in  his  biographies  fol- 
lowed the  sensible  rule  which  adds  to  the  portrait 
of  a  great  man  his  way  of  eating,  drinking  and 
walking,  his  preferences  and  even  his  hobbies.  He 
approved  absolutely  certain  decisive  pages  which 
Marcel  Schwob  wrote  on  this  subject  at  the  be- 
ginning of  his  Vies  Iniagijtaires.  Details  which 
are  small  in  appearance  are  in  fact  serious  chan- 
nels through  which  we  penetrate  to  the  clearer 
view  of  ancient  times  and  thread  the  labyrinth 
of  dead  souls. 

Opinions  are  "  things  of  the  word,"  transitory 
and  insignificant  things  ;  that  is  the  reason  that 
the  life  of  political  people  is  generally  so  wretched 
and  commonplace.  The  market-place,  the  preto- 
rian  tribune,  the  ante-chambers  of  sovereigns,  fed- 
eral chambers  and  legislatures,  as  well  as  the 
conversations  there  taking  place,  are  no  better 
than  ghosts,  phantoms  and  masks.  This  or  that 
habit,  this  vice,  that  peculiarity  of  speech  or  of 
costume,  this  touch  of  gluttony  or  luxury  in  Tal- 
leyrand or  Napoleon  the  Great  becomes  in  our 
eyes  extremely  important  and  takes  on  the  lively 
air  of  a  confession.  This  it  is  that  is  called  by 
pedants  bonhomie,  but  more  correctly  by  others 
"  humanity." 

Now  what  interests  us  in  such  notes  as  these  in 
6 


82  Alp  house  Daudet, 

history  is  that  quality  whereby  they  differ  from 
other  things,  whatever  may  be  the  differences 
themselves. 

When  he  was  creating  my  father  saw  what  he 
created.  When  he  was  writing  he  heard.  A 
certain  number  of  physicians  belonging  to  the  new 
school  came  to  interview  him  on  this  point  and 
in  pedantic  words  they  have  simplified  a  natural 
and  complete  method.  Ever  since  the  celebrated 
"  Schema "  of  Charcot,  people  keep  repeating 
indefinitely  the  old  scholastic  distinction  between 
"  auditives  "  and  "  rituals,"  categories  which  have 
nothing  absolute  in  them,  and  are  of  no  use  ex- 
cept as  an  hypothesis.  And  if  he  heard  he  also 
spoke.  He  practised  the  sound  of  his  dialogues 
and  tried  the  harmony  of  his  descriptions.  Fear 
of  wordiness,  which  was  always  on  the  increase 
with  him,  caused  him  to  use,  especially  in  his 
last  works,  a  picturesque  brevity  in  which  every 
sensation  is  like  a  lightning  flash ;  reflection  does 
not  come  to  the  surface  but  silently  emanates  from 
the  characters.  He  has  been  reproached,  but  very 
foolishly,  for  his  curt  and  nervous  phrases  which 
are  as  near  the  actuality  as  possible,  since  every 
word  plays  a  trick  with  us  and  deceives  us  as  to 
its  duration. 

I  have  forgotten  none  of  the  fine  regulations 
which  he  scrupulously  applied :  "  Whether  the 
question  is  a  book  or  an  article,  whether  a  direct 
creation  or  a  criticism,  never  take  up  the  pen 
unless  you  have  something  to  say."  If  the  literary 
mania  continues  to  develop  itself,  very  soon  there 


Life  and  Literature.  83 

will  not  be  a  single  Frenchman  who  has  not  got 
out  his  own  book. 

"  Setting,  ideas,  situations,  characters,  all  these 
are  not  right  until  a  very  slow  and  instructive 
digestion  has  been  gone  through  with,  in  which  all 
nature,  gifted  in  the  least  of  its  component  parts, 
collaborates  with  the  writer.  We  are  like  women 
in  a  hopeful  situation;  people  can  see  it  in  our 
very  faces.  We  have  the  pregnant  woman's 
'  mask,' 

"  Style  is  a  state  of  intensity.  The  greatest 
number  of  things  in  the  fewest  number  of  words. 
Don't  fear  to  repeat  yourself,  according  to  Pascal's 
counsel.     There  are  no  synonyms. 

"  Push  always  toward  clearness  and  concise 
lucidity.  Our  tongue  has  its  own  moral  laws. 
Whoever  attempts  to  avoid  them  will  not  last. 
Our  tongue  is  suppler  than  any  other,  as  intel- 
lectual as  it  is  logical,  more  closely  ranged  than 
declamatory  and  has  quick  and  short  reflections  in 
very  precise  forms.  It  is  not  favorable  to  antique 
terms  or  phrases.  It  appeals  more  to  the  mind 
than  the  ear.  There  are  very  few  shades  which  it 
does  not  express,  very  {q'n  true  distinctions  wliich 
it  does  not  define.  It  is  especially  triumphant 
when  expressing  ideas  suggested, 

"  Descendants  of  the  Latins,  who  were  a  con- 
structive people,  we  have  a  taste  for  solid  things. 
Harmony  also  is  indispensable,  even  for  picturing 
the  passions  where  disorder  is  a  beauty.  Let  that 
same  disorder  only  be  a  seeming  one :  let  us  be 
aware  of  a  profound  rule  and  order  underneath! 


84  Alp  house  Datidet. 

That  will  always  be  in  conformity  with  the 
truth ;  the  worst  of  tempests  submits  to  its  own 
laws. 

"  Description  of  a  character  carried  on  to  its 
final  completion  should  not  be  made  except  little 
by  little,  according  as  the  character  reveals  itself 
and  according  as  life  reacts  upon  it. 

"  Society,  landscape  and  circumstances,  all  that 
environs  us,  have  a  share  in  our  state  of  mind. 
You  must  enter  into  the  person  you  are  de- 
scribing, into  his  very  skin,  and  see  the  world 
through  his  eyes  and  feel  it  through  his  senses. 
Direct  intervention  on  the  part  of  the  writer  is  an 
error. 

"  On  the  other  hand  the  theory  of  impassiveness 
is  exaggerated.  He  who  tells  a  story  has  the 
right  to  be  moved,  himself;  but  with  discretion, 
and  as  it  were  behind  the  scenes,  by  the  affairs  of 
heroes  and  heroines,  but  without  doing  harm  to 
that  illusion  which  makes  the  charm.  All  the  live 
forces  of  the  author  are  taken  up  by  the  expression 
of  reality.  Lyricism,  realism  and  even  frenzy,  all 
these  may  unite  and  produce  power.  Beauty  has 
no  label.     Sincerity  includes  everything. 

"  It  is  necessary  to  have  respect  for  the  reader : 
An  author  has  morally  a  guardianship  over  souls. 
Sure  of  his  means  and  being  able  to  corrupt,  he  is 
culpable  if  he  abuses  his  trust,  if  he  ruins  vital 
nobility,  if  he  does  not  go  from  below  upward, 
which  is  the  direction  of  an  honest  conscience. 
Intellectually,  too,  he  should  have  respect  for  the 
reader  and  insist  only  upon  the  essential  things, 


Life  and  Literature.  85 

not  falsify  enthusiasm  but  keep  his  scrupulousness 
simple  and  pure. 

"  Truth  is  a  perfect  union  of  soul  between  the 
author  and  that  which  surrounds  him,  between 
that  which  he  conceives  and  perceives  and  that 
which  he  expresses.  The  realm  of  imagination 
itself  has  its  truth.  There  are  lies  on  Mount 
Parnassus  as  well  as  in  the  street. 

"  Art  consists  of  more  than  mere  selection.  It 
includes  decision  and  boldness  besides.  No  hypo- 
crisy, no  fraud  !  The  roadways  of  life  lie  open. 
It  is  not  permitted  to  deviate  from  them  nor  to 
halt  by  the  way. 

"  There  is  the  courage  of  the  author  to  be  con- 
sidered, which  consists  in  accomplishing  his  mis- 
sion to  the  very  end.  The  bold  are  always 
victorious.  The  timid  ones  always  remain  incom- 
plete. It  is  not  necessary  to  help  on  one's  work ; 
because  it  goes  of  itself  No  obstacle,  however 
frank  and  powerful,  will  prevent  its  triumph- 
ing. 

"  There  is  danger  in  thinking  about  pleasing. 
Another  danger  is  to  wish  to  astonish.  Notoriety 
flies  always  from  those  who  seek  it  through  low 
means." 

A  very  incomplete  enumeration.  I  shall  rec- 
tify it  as  I  go  on.  My  father  presented  the 
same  principles  in  the  richest  and  most  multitu- 
dinous forms.  But  the  foundation  remains  un- 
changed. 

These  few  profound  and  solid  rules,  which  he 
laid  down  whilst  we  were  talking  in  private,  gave 


86  Alphonse  Daudet. 

him  the  chance  to  use  a  delightful  variety  of  images 
and  of  impressions  for  all  the  rest,  for  the  transi- 
tory affairs  of  life.  Just  as  in  conversation  he  was 
never  caught  napping  when  a  reply  was  due  from 
him,  for  he  uttered  it  quickly,  brilliantly  and  in 
winged  words,  in  the  same  way  the  small  affairs  of 
daily  intercourse  and  the  most  trivial  episodes 
could  never  take  him  unawares.  We  had  gradually 
formed  such  a  habit  of  these  delightful  and  charm- 
ing conversations  during  which  the  hours  slipped 
by  over  our  books,  that  an  elliptical  language  had 
gradually  grown  up  between  us  for  our  own  special 
use.  Each  one  filled  out  the  other's  thought  and 
then  prolonged  the  idea  by  a  remark,  the  sense  of 
which  he  indicated  in  the  fewest  words,  where  only 
the  essential  was  uttered. 

That  you  will  find  again  in  his  work;  it  is  a 
faithful  mold  of  his  mind.  The  largest  good  sense, 
that  masterly  gift  in  comparison  with  w-hich  the 
most  brilliant  qualities  are  worth  but  little,  ani- 
mates the  whole  of  his  work  with  a  deathless  breath 
—  that  good  sense  which  Descartes  called  "  least 
common  to  man."  So  fruitful  is  its  action  that 
it  no  longer  expresses  itself  but  leaves  the  field 
clear  to  the  imagination,  which  thereafter  becomes 
as  free  as  any  goddess,  smiling,  fleeing  and  clad 
in  curtal  robe. 

The  reader  is  ever  close  behind  the  author  and 
the  author  inspires  him  with  confidence.  Take 
for  example  some  poet,  Carlyle,  we  will  say,  a  rain 
of  stars  and  of  metaphors  which  play  across  the 
sky  and  the  veiled  night.     Notwithstanding  all  his 


Life  and  Literature.  Sy 

genius,  why  has  Carlyle  only  a  very  narrow  place 
in  human  imaginings?  It  is  because  he  lacks  that 
intimate  harmony  which  souls  ecstatic  over  fancied 
images  unconsciously  demand.  He  has  never  con- 
quered our  confidence.  A  word  from  the  lips,  a 
slightest  word  from  the  lips  of  him  who  has  com- 
pletely conquered  us  by  his  wisdom  takes  on  a 
magical  value.  Whither  he  ascends,  thither  we 
follow.  We  fraternize  through  enthusiasm.  A 
sympathy  is  set  up  between  the  most  magnificent 
genius  and  the  reader.  We  are  astonished,  we  are 
astonished,  but  we  are  not  conquered. 

What  I  have  attempted  to  express  as  well  as  I 
could  in  these  words  was  carved  into  my  mind  by 
my  father  in  clear  and  marvellously  exact  terms. 
I  myself  was  one  of  his  works.  He  desired  to 
finish  me  in  every  part  as  he  did  the  others.  Alas, 
poor  stuff  that  it  was  !  If  you  have  not  been  able 
to  profit  by  his  teaching,  at  any  rate  pass  on  his 
fertile  words  !  Be  exact  and  truthful !  Perhaps 
another  will  be  found  for  whom  this  torch,  piously 
relit,  may  show  the  way.  Many  a  time  while 
listening  to  my  friend  have  I  thought : 

"  If  I  am  destined  to  survive  him,  I  shall  call 
upon  my  memory  for  a  grand  efibrt  of  revival.  I 
shall  impose  upon  myself  the  task  of  putting  down 
in  writing  those  fugitive  beauties,  often  as  impos- 
sible to  transmit  as  words  of  love  which  lack  the 
time  and  the  countenances  of  the  lovers."  And 
ye  who  read,  be  indulgent  to  me,  for  I  bring 
hither  my  entire  conscience.  A  witness  of  a  most 
noble    spectacle,   I   have  tried  to   retain  phrases, 


88  Alphonse  Daudet. 

gestures,  intonations  and  play  of  features.  My 
father  loved  the  truth.  I  wish  to  serve  truth  in 
my  turn  down  to  the  most  intimate  scenes,  guided 
by  him  and  encouraged  by  the  lofty  recollection 
of  his  character. 


III. 


AS   FATHER  AND  AS   HUSBAND— THE  VENDOR 
OF   HAPPINESS. 

My  father  was  often  wont  to  repeat:  "  When  my 
task  is  finished  I  should  Hke  to  establish  myself  as 
a  Vendor  of  Happiness ;  my  profits  would  consist 
in  my  success." 

Then  he  would  add :  "  There  are  so  many  men 
who  are  somnambulists  and  pass  through  exist- 
ance  without  seeing  where  they  are,  stumbling 
against  obstacles  and  bruising  their  brows  against 
walls  which  it  would  be  easy  for  them  to  circum- 
vent !  I  have  put  this  phrase  in  the  mouth  of  one 
of  my  characters  :  *  All  things  in  life  have  a  side 
or  a  meaning  through  which  they  can  be  grasped.' 
But  that  is  no  metaphor." 

Then  he  would  toss  his  head  with  an  indulgent 
half  smile  and  a  sigh :  "  There  is  no  such  thing 
as  commonplace  in  the  world ;  it  only  exists  in 
people's  minds.  Renan  is  a  little  sad  because 
Gavroche  is  as  learned  as  he  is.  But  Gavroche  is 
a  parrot.  In  his  brain  words  have  no  value  at  all. 
Suppose  a  young  person  talks  about  death.  It  is 
very- rarely  the  case  that  one  notices  in  him  the 
existence  of  that  black  gulf  which  this  terrible  syl- 
lable at  once  opens  in  the  soul  of  an  old  man. 


90  Alphonse  Daudet. 

You  know  the  emotion  which  all  of  a  sudden  comes 
upon  us  at  sight  of  some  noun  or  verb  which  we 
had  been  carelessly  repeating  up  to  the  day  on 
which  the  true  and  deep-seated  meaning  appeared 
to  us.  Revelations  of  that  sort  are  the  result  of 
the  teaching  of  years. 

"  I  am  not  boasting,  I  was  a  precocious  mind. 
At  an  early  age  I  understood,  /«  my  very  bones,  the 
actual  value  of  many  of  the  words  which  youth 
employs  with  the  utmost  carelessness  and  ease. 
Disease  and  sorrow  produce  another  sort  of  matur- 
ity. They  lend  truthfulness  to  language.  In  such 
cases  people  live  on  their  capital  instead  of  living 
on  their  interest;  for  it  cannot  be  ignored  that 
emotions  and  even  a  somewhat  burning  thought 
represent  a  loss  of  substance,  the  one  step  farther 
on.  Oh,  the  wisdom  of  the  very  sick  !  Oh,  eyes 
too  brilliant  and  too  well  informed !  In  the  public 
gardens,  dragged  about  in  sick  chairs,  I  meet 
people  whose  looks  frighten  me." 

"Then,  father,  the  vendor  of  happiness  .  .  .  ?" 
"I  mean  no  allegory;  the  vendor  would  go  to 
the  sick  and  to  every  one  ;  by  tenderness  he  would 
gain  their  confidence;  like  a  patient  and  gentle 
physician  he  would  examine  the  moral  wound, 
mark  its  extent  and  progress  and  reassure  the 
sick  man  through  the  spectacle  of  his  fellows; 
that  is  the  argument  of  egoism  which  never  faileth! 
From  that  point  he  would  gradually  rise  toward 
the  picture  of  a  restricted  but  still  a  noble  destiny, 
if  only  the  patient  knows  hov^  to  employ  himself 
by  drying  the  tears  about  him  and  consoling  others 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.  91 

while  consoling  himself.  To  put  one's  goal  beyond 
oneself,  to  place  one's  ideal  outside  of  oneself  — 
that  is  to  escape  from  Fate  to  a  certain  extent." 

How  many  a  time,  entering  unexpectedly  his 
study,  have  I  not  caught  sight  of  attitudes  of 
anguish  in  his  visitors  and  interrupted  confidences 
which  I  felt  were  grave  and  pressing !  If  secrecy 
had  not  been  asked  my  friend  would  then  show 
the  situation  to  me,  and  all  the  difficulties  whose 
simplest  and  most  "  humane "  solution  he  was 
seeking. 

But  when  I  said  to  him :  "  Be  vendor  of  happi- 
ness to  yourself !  "  he  answered:  "  My  existence 
is  a  mere  matter  of  effort  from  day  to  day,  I  have 
the  greatest  confidence  in  those  little  efforts  of  the 
will  which  bind  me  down  to  some  fixed  hour,  such 
as  to  seat  myself  at  the  table  notwithstanding  my 
sufferings,  to  disdain  and  affront  my  illness.  Ima- 
gine the  torture  of  the  circular  wall  which  little  by 
little  grows  smaller,  the  torture  of  one  impossibil- 
ity after  the  other !  How  true  it  is,  that  phrase 
repeated  by  the  coquette  in  front  of  her  looking- 
glass  :  To  think  that  I  shall  regret  all  that  to-mor- 
row !  Well,  the  never-ending  cares  of  the  father 
of  a  family,  the  anxieties  as  to  my  household 
are  a  great  resource  for  me.  The  feeling  of  respon- 
sibility is  enough  to  keep  a  man  on  his  legs  after 
his  strength  has  given  out.  Then  I  think  about 
my  fellow-men.  If  financial  want  is  added  to  their 
sufferings,  if  they  have  not  the  resources  of  fire 
and  of  food  and  of  wine  and  of  warm  affection  — 
why  then  I  consider  myself  still  happier. 


92  Alp  house  Datidet. 

"  I  keep  my  pitifulness  fresh  by  repeating  to 
myself  that  there  are  far  worse  sorrows  than  mine, 
and  so  I  do  not  use  up  all  my  pity  on  myself. 
You  know  that  a  good  many  philosophers  banish 
pity  from  their  republic  as  if  it  were  a  weakness  or 
degradation,  or  as  if  it  were  a  lack  of  energy. 

"  The  vendor  of  happiness  would  preach  the 
religion  of  active  pity  and  not  of  useless  fears.  To 
him  who  suffers,  suffering  is  always  new.  But  to 
witnesses  thereof,  even  tender  and  energetic  ones, 
suffering  grows  old  and  becomes  a  mere  habit. 
I  tell  a  sick  person:  *  Give  yourself  distractions 
and  through  your  spirit  wrestle  to  the  very  end; 
do  not  weary  and  harass  the  people  about 
you.' " 

"  The  Stoics  long  ago  discovered  the  pleasure 
which  people  find  in  the  constant  exercise  of 
energy.  I  could  suggest  a  thousand  tricks  to  a 
patient  who  is  gifted  with  imagination.  I  would 
advise  a  person  who  is  not  able  to  mix  laughter  with 
actualities  to  place  his  sufferings  before  him  on  a 
grand  scale  until  he  reaches  the  point  when  the 
beauty  of  the  struggle  makes  its  appearance  and 
gives  grandeur  to  the  whole.  That  is  a  particular 
kind  of  intoxication  which  makes  the  least  subtle 
person  strangely  intelligent ;  it  is  one  of  the  keys  of 
human  natiwe. 

"  And,  to  start  with,  everything  takes  its  place 
and  falls  into  its  natural  plane.  Little  trivial 
sorrows  which  increase  for  us  our  enjoyments 
and  moral  laziness  recoil  toward  the  background 
and  reach  their  proper  level.     Had  it  not  been  for 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.  93 

my  sickness,  perhaps  I  might  have  been  an 
'  author,'  a  prey  to  the  sillinesses  of  the  profession, 
trembling  at  criticism,  off  my  head  through  praise 
and  duped  by  empty  triumphs.  Of  course  I  have 
weaknesses  .  .  .  nevertheless  I  have  been  puri- 
fied. .  .  At  the  Lamalou  Baths  I  have  met  '  So- 
sies^  of  suffering'  in  the  shape  of  men  belonging 
to  the  most  varied  professions.  They  were  all 
transcendental  and  '  above  themselves,'  lighted 
up  by  swift  gleams  which  traversed  their  flesh  and 
penetrated  their  very  souls. 

"  Among  the  confessions  which  I  have  received, 
those  made  me  by  the  damned  ones  down  there 
seem  to  show  a  special  kind  of  harshness  and 
frankness.  The  very  words  they  use  have  more 
breadth  and  more  relief," 

The  notes  taken  by  my  father  in  regard  to  this 
subject  during  his  stay  at  hot  baths  are  very 
typical  and  fine.  Such  observations  on  the  part 
of  a  man  of  letters  astonished  the  physicians, 
because  they  were  more  complete  and  subtle  than 
those  which  might  have  been  collected  by  a 
scientist.  Without  preconceived  ideas  and  inter- 
mingled theories,  they  possessed  the  clearness  of  a 
cross-examination  put  on  paper.  The  most  fright- 
ful shames,  the  secret  wretchednesses  of  men, 
women  and  aged  men  are  stated  there  discreetly 
with  the  wisdom  of  a  physician-poet.  Most  of 
our  neighbors  in  the  hotel,  some  of  them  stran- 
gers from   America,    Spain  and   Russia,   arranged 

1  Character  in  the  Amphitryon  of  Plautus,  whose  semblance 
was  taken  by  Mercury ;  Moliere  used  him  in  one  of  his  plays. 


94  Alphonse  Daudet. 

their  hours  so  as  to  made  their  treatment  coincide 
with  that  of  the  noveHst.  He  reassured  them  and 
quieted  their  spirits,  thus  completing  the  work  of 
the  physician.  Many  of  them  confided  to  him 
with  that  zeal  in  giving  details,  that  ardor  and 
extraordinary  pride  which  are  common  to  people 
who  possess  a  grave  and  still  undefined  malady. 
He  noted  down,  classified  and  compared  the  most 
peculiar  nervous  troubles,  manias,  fears,  chronic 
or  recurrent  disorders ;  these  deviations  from  the 
course  of  nature  often  aided  him  in  understand- 
ing nature ;  they  would  light  up  some  obscure 
region  and  thus  do  service  to  his  constant  search 
after  knowledge. 

"  Evil  in  the  family  and  society,"  such  modifi- 
cations as  it  makes  in  characters,  temperaments 
and  trades,  the  ingeniousness  shown  by  egotists, 
rich  or  poor,  these  are  the  questions  which  in- 
flamed him  and  warmed  his  blood ;  these  he  col- 
lected at  every  moment  with  a  methodicalness  and 
conscientiousness  most  uncommon. 

There  are  entire  lives  which  are  summed  up  in 
a  few  lines:  "Misers  turned  to  spendthrifts"  — 
"  violent  men  become  timorous  "  —  "  chaste  peo- 
ple tormented  by  passions  they  dare  not  avow." 
Initials  call  back  to  me  names  and  faces  and  sor- 
rowful outlines.  A  word  is  enough  to  bring  up 
a  whole  personality;  "ruined  careers"  —  there  is 
one  like  the  title  for  a  chapter.  Frightful  odds 
and  ends  of  a  dialogue:  "Sir,  what  I  fear  the 
most  is  the  moment  when  I  do  not  suffer.  This 
evening  my  imagination  shudders.  .  .  I  see  all  my 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.  95 

hopes  dashed   to  the  ground — love,   future.  .  . 
ah!   .  .  " 

Sometimes  a  smile  or  a  funny  phrase  lights  up 
these  frightful  pictures.  A  give-away  phrase  !  Like 
to  lightning  which  for  an  instant  illuminates  the 
landscape,  such  a  phrase  lights  up  the  hidden 
depths  of  a  being,  that  labyrinth  into  which  even 
the  most  intimate  observation  penetrates  in  vain. 

It  was  owing  to  such  facts  as  these  that  my 
father  perceived  this  idea  which  he  has  so  often 
expressed  :  "  No  matter  how  much  of  a  realist  one 
may  be,  a  writer  recoils  before  the  reality.  Dis- 
courses that  one  gets  off,  vanities  that  one  shows 
onf,  passions  in  which  one  wallows,  all  that  is  so 
much  parade  before  the  multitude. 

"  Beside  this  there  is  an  abyss  which  no  one 
dares  to  stir,  mud  which  does  not  belong  to  our 
being,  a  thick  and  miry  mud  in  which  are  the 
half-formed  models  for  all  vices  and  all  crimes 
such  as  do  not  even  reach  the  priest's  confessional. 
Would  it  be  possible  a  single  time  to  plunge  down 
there?  That  is  what  I  have  often  asked  myself. 
Let  us  imagine,  then,  some  dark  and  secret  place, 
for  example  a  hospital  for  maladies  of  the  eyes,  in 
which  people,  lying  near  each  other  side  by  side 
in  absolute  black  darkness,  ignoring  each  other's 
names  and  age,  and  almost  each  other's  sex, 
moreover  never  intending  to  see  each  other  again, 
should  freely  express  themselves  and  avow  what 
torments  them,  whispering  as  it  were  gropingly 
from  bed  to  bed." 

He  applied  to  his  sorrows  the  celebrated  axiom : 


96  Alp  house  Daudet. 

"  Poetry  is  deliverance ;  "  whence  that  sketch  for 
a  book  called  La  Dotdou  whose  elements  he 
had  collected,  which  he  did  not  publish,  however, 
owing  to  our  insistence.  Here  it  is  before  me, 
that  terrible  and  implacable  breviary !  Certainly 
it  did  need  a  fine  courage  "to  deliver  oneself" 
after  such  a  fashion ;  but  have  I  not  already  indi- 
cated the  fierce  necessity  of  confessing  himself 
which   my  father   showed? 

In  our  days  science  has  taken  on  pretentious 
airs.  Science  has  believed  that  she  could  conquer 
the  spirit.  Alphonse  Daudet  was  too  sagacious  to 
believe  in  the  labels  called  psychology,  physiol- 
ogy, pathology  —  labels  which  the  wind  blows 
away  and  the  rain  defaces. 

Auguste  Comte's  dogma  had  never  secured  any 
hold  upon  his  imagination,  always  so  clear  and 
always  in  action,  one  that  never  accepted  fine 
words  for  facts.  We  used  to  amuse  ourselves  to- 
gether over  that  impudence  shown  in  explaining 
and  s}'stematizing  everything  which  is  the  mark 
of  the  modern  pedant:  "the  husk  of  words  for 
the  grain  of  things  "  according  to  Leibnitz.  He 
had  had  long  conversations  with  powerful  and 
lucid  Charcot,  with  Brown-Sequard,  tormented  by 
his  genius,  with  Potain,  the  master  of  masters,  in 
whom  pity  went  on  increasing  as  his  knowledge 
grew.  So  he  did  not  fail  to  know  all  there  was 
to  know  upon  that  other  side  of  the  human  riddle 
which  bears  different  mottos  and  teaches  us  by 
two  very  different  ways.  There  as  elsev/here  his 
power  of  comprehension  had  served  him  well. 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.  97 

But  by  the  power  of  his  thought  he  kept  him- 
self at  the  point  where  art,  which  differentiates 
and  individualizes,  crosses  the  path  of  science, 
which  classifies  and  generalizes ;  so  that  it  has 
often  happened  to  me  to  say  to  him  laughingly : 
"  You  are  creating  a  new  method." 

That  which  is  scientifically  known  concerning 
pain  could  be  put  in  a  few  pages.  That  which 
one  obtains  metaphysically  by  induction  concern- 
ing pain  can  be  expressed  in  a  few  lines.  That 
which  a  poet  and  observer  obtains  for  his  harvest 
through  the  study  of  pain  among  individuals  is 
infinite.  The  metaphysician  and  the  scientist,  yes, 
even  the  mystic,  ought  to  draw  from  that  treasury 
if  they  wish  to  enrich  their  facts  at  a  single  stroke. 
Not  only  did  my  father  suffer,  but  he  has  seen 
others  suffer.  In  that  way  he  was  able  to  recog- 
nize certain  domains  in  the  realm  of  evil  where 
the  ignorance  of  to-day,  drawing  from  the  sources 
of  the  old  biographers,  is  still  putting  the  old 
inscription  "  tigers  and  lions  "  on  the  map,  that  is 
to  say,  hollow  formulas! 

One  day  when  I  was  explaining  to  him  the  cross- 
ing of  the  new  fibres  in  the  brain  and  spinal  cord, 
he  cried  out :  "  Plato's  team  !  "  Thus  was  imagi- 
nation in  touch  with  reality.  That  is  the  tendency 
which  I  remark  in  all  his  notes  on  suffering.  In 
one  place  he  compares  those  whom  paralysis  has 
stricken  to  satyrs  changed  into  trees  or  to  pet- 
rified dryads.  In  another  place  he  sighs :  "  I 
might  date  the  beginning  of  my  pain  as  that  de- 
lightful Mile.  Lespinasse    dated  her   love  —  from 

7 


98  Alp  house  Daudet. 

every  instant  of  my  life  !  "  Or  else  it  might  happen 
that  he  said  with  gentle  irony:  "For  hypochon- 
dria read  ignorance  on  the  part  of  doctors." 

What  becomes  of  pride  in  the  person  who 
suffers,  what  become  of  tenderness  and  of  charity, 
whither  go  the  lively  passions,  luxuriousness  and 
hatred?  How  does  the  life  of  a  family  change  its 
aspects,  the  relations  between  the  married  people, 
beween  father  and  children  and  friends?  How 
do  people  habituate  themselves  to  evil  and  resign 
themselves?  or  what  revolt  is  there  against  it,  and 
what  form  does  that  revolt  take?  and  in  conse- 
quence of  what  efforts?  These  are  just  so  many 
troublesome  questions  which  he  answers  with  an 
absolute  frankness  in  accordance  with  his  hard 
experience  or  which  he  allows  to  remain  in  doubt, 
if  that  is  his  mood.  The  variations  themselves  in 
this  same  mood  he  passes  in  review  with  a  re- 
signed philosophy  all  his  own,  and  it  is  wonderful 
to  see  how  through  his  will  power  he  resists  and 
opposes  to  every  attack  all  the  resources  of  a 
hard-headed  morality. 

I  can  still  see  him  seated  in  the  little  garden  of 
the  Hotel  Mas  at  Lamalou  surrounded  by  sick 
people,  preaching  energy  to  them,  reassuring  the 
nervous  ones,  taking  pains  with  the  despairing  and 
giving  them  glimpses  of  some  possible  holding-off 
or  drawing-back  of  their  fate:  "  The  doctors  don't 
know  any  more  than  we ;  they  know  even  less 
than  we  do,  because  their  knowledge  is  made  up 
of  an  average  drawn  from  observations  which  are 
generally  hasty  and  incomplete,  and  because  every 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.  99 

case  is  a  new  and  peculiar  one.  You,  Sir,  have 
this  symptom,  you  yonder  have  another.  It  would 
be  necessary  to  join  you  both  to  Madame  here, 
in  order  to  obtain  something  which  resembles 
somewhat  my  own  martyrdom.  There  are  a  great 
many  dififerent  kinds  of  instruments  belonging  to 
the  hangman;  if  they  do  not  scare  you  too  much, 
examine  them  carefully.  It  is  with  our  tortures 
as  with  shadows.  Attention  clears  them  up  and 
drives  them  off.  Let  us  change  a  bit  the  beautiful 
verses  by  Hugo: 

" '  II  n'est  point  de  douleur,  comme  il  n'est  point  d'alg^bre 
Qui  rdsiste  au  milieu  des  itres  ou  des  cieux 
A  la  fixitd  calme  et  profonde  des  yeux.' " 

"Come  now,  just  watch  me;  I  am  talking;  I 
say  oh !  ah  !  ow  !  and  my  talk  is  a  great  solace  to 
myself.  While  warming  others  I  warm  myself.  .  .  . 
It  is  all  right  —  since  those  among  you  who  have  a 
family  which  they  love  consider  their  disease  as  a 
sort  of  lightning-rod.  Destiny  has  satisfied  its 
hatred  in  them.  Avoid  egotism  ;  it  increases 
suffering;  it  renders  suffering  atrocious  and  more 
unbearable.  Don't  open  those  big  books  ;  you  will 
never  get  anything  out  of  them  except  terror,  for 
they  never  treat  of  any  but  extreme  cases.  The 
frightened  face  of  Diafoirus  will  be  enough  if  you 
present  to  him  some  unpublished  symptom  '  which 
cannot  be  found  in  the  dictionary.'  The  surprise 
on  the  part  of  the  doctor  is  so  amusing  to  me  that 
I  would  like  to  invent  such  words.  But  it  will  not 
do  to  push  the  thing  too  far,  for  then  they  treat 


lOO  Alphonse  Daudet. 

you  as  a  '  malade  imaginaire '  and  they  cease  to 
feel  sorry  for  you.  Now  we  people  of  the  South 
who  are  here  in  a  majority,  we  like  to  be  worried 
over;  Moliere  saw  that  very  clearly  when  he  came 
to  P6z6nas. 

"  Argan  is  Orgon  pronounced  in  the  Provencal 
way,  and  Orgon  is  found  in  the  character  of  Tar- 
tuffe.  They  ought  to  play  the  Malade  Imagi- 
naire with  the  accent  of  the  South ;  that  would 
furnish  an  irresistibly  comic  spectacle." 

With  such  discourses  and  many  others  and  with 
his  own  example  and  courage  my  father  was  wont 
to  enliven  the  wretched  people  in  that  sorrowful 
country  which,  when  he  retired  to  his  room,  he 
compared  to  the  inferno  of  Dante,  because  one 
could  find  there  specimens  of  every  kind  of  pun- 
ishment. And  that  action  in  a  twofold  way  of  the 
observer  and  consoler  is  a  faithful  image  of  his 
nature. 

One  can  readily  understand  that  he  was  inter- 
ested in  famous  sufferers  of  former  days.  He  knew 
fundamentally  the  maladies  of  Pascal  and  of  Rous- 
seau and  of  Montaigne  as  well  as  that  of  Henri 
Heine  nearer  his  day.  But  he  was  very  careful 
not  to  take  up  wild  hypotheses  like  those  which 
our  psychologists  have  seized  upon;  for  example, 
the  likening  of  genius  to  madness  made  him  shrug 
his  shoulders. 

A  continued  theme  with  him  was  the  alliance 
between  pity  and  pain :  "  He  who  has  never  felt 
hunger  and  never  been  cold,  he  who  has  never 
suffered  can  talk  neither  about  the  cold,  nor  hunger, 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        loi 

nor  suffering.  He  does  not  even  know  very  well 
what  bread  is,  nor  what  is  fire,  nor  what  is  resigna- 
tion. In  the  first  part  of  my  life  I  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  misery;  in  the  second,  of  pain. 
Thus  my  senses  became  sharpened  —  if  I  should 
say  to  what  point  sharpened,  no  one  would  believe 
me,  A  single  face  in  distress  at  the  corner  of  the 
street  has  upset  my  soul  and  will  never  leave  my 
memory.  There  are  certain  intonations  which  I 
avoid  recalling  lest  I  should  cry  like  a  fool.  Oh, 
those  actors  !  What  genius  is  necessary  to  them 
in  order  to  reproduce  that  which  they  have  expe- 
rienced. No  trembling,  no  exaggeration  .  .  .  and 
then  the  right  accent  —  that  wonderful  right  accent 
—  which  comes  from  the  vitals  !  " 

Moreover  any  false  note  in  an  intonation,  every 
attempt  at  second-rate  pathos,  every  philanthropi- 
cal  masquerade  —  all  "  honored  ladies  "  and  "  worthy 
sirs  "  uttered  in  what  he  called  a  "  throaty  "  voice 
exasperated  him.  I  have  seen  tactless  persons  who 
knew  he  was  charitable  boasting  in  his  presence  of 
sacrifices  and  imaginary  benefactions.  Irony  began 
to  stir  in  his  eyes  which  suddenly  became  black 
and  brilliant.  He  cut  the  hypocrite  short  by  some 
disconcerting  exclamation,  or  else  he  expressed 
his  disbelief  with  a  malignant  sweetness  which 
delighted  every  one. 

Readers  of  his  books  need  only  recall  the  por- 
traits of  Argenton,  Madame  Hautmann  and  of 
Astier  Rehu,  but,  as  he  said,  the  most  complete 
figures  of  romance  lack  the  "  moisture  of  reality." 

We  are  in  the  landau.     The  sky  is  clear.     On 


I02  Alp  house  Daudet. 

the  edge  of  the  turnpike  sits  a  ragged  fellow  with 
a  mean  face,  no  linen,  eyes  full  of  anger  and  weari- 
ness. The  magnificence  of  nature  sparkles  and 
gleams  about  this  vagabond  as  if  to  exasperate 
his  distress.  Willy-nilly,  we  must  stop;  my  father 
is  not  able  to  get  out  of  the  carriage,  but  he  talks 
to  the  man  whilst  I  hand  over  the  alms  of  the 
•'  rich  gentleman,"  And  he  asks  questions  in  a 
familiar  way,  with  a  kindliness  and  so  clear  an  ex- 
pression of  a  wish  to  excuse  the  disproportion  of 
things,  that  the  hollow  face  softens  and  relaxes. 

We  go  on.  Then  says  my  gentle  friend: 
"  These  horses,  the  coachman,  the  carriage,  every- 
thing is  arranged  so  that  one  can  pass  quickly; 
everything  combats  charity,  everything  is  in  a  state 
of  virtuous  indignation  against  the  tramp.  There 
it  is,  that  is  fortune !  One  cannot  see  the  poor 
from  the  cushions  of  the  landau ;  they  form  part 
of  another  world,  and  those  favored  by  fortune 
turn  their  heads  aside.  But  in  the  glare  of  the  un- 
fortunate one  hatred  accumulates,  ,  .  .  Nothing 
is  lost  in  this  world  .  .  ,  just    as    in    chemistry." 

Among  the  works  he  had  in  preparation  one  of 
the  most  important,  for  which  he  had  many  frag- 
ments and  a  general  plan,  was  La  Caravaiie. 
The  thread  of  the  book  is  a  journey  in  a  trap  made 
by  two  couples  who  are  friends,  men  and  women 
of  opposite  character  and  lively  intelligence,  be- 
tween whom  a  drama  of  passion  and  jealousy 
unrolls  itself  whilst  they  are  traversing  the  finest 
landscapes  of  France.  My  father  knew  and 
admired  the  principal  sections  of  our  land  in  all 


As  Father  and  as  Husba7td.        103 

their  diversity.  He  always  insisted  upon  the  in- 
fluence of  the  soil  and  local  habits ;  a  devotee  of 
tradition  in  his  soul,  although  a  revolutionist  on 
other  sides,  he  extolled  in  conversation  the  mar- 
vellous views  of  Brittany,  Normandy,  Touraine, 
Alsatia,  the  Ardeche,  the  Lyonnais,  Bourgogne, 
Provence  and  Languedoc.  He  had  made  a  pro- 
found study  of  characters  according  to  district. 

His  first  question  of  a  stranger  or  a  beginner 
was:  "Where  were  you  born?"  As  soon  as  he 
was  informed  he  sought  through  his  vast  memory 
for  the  dominating  points  of  the  region.  From  hav- 
ing made  researches  into  his  own  origin  he  had 
constructed  a  method.  Changes  of  temperament 
along  a  given  river  or  a  given  valley  excited  his 
curiosity  to  the  highest  degree  :  "  The  Norman 
is  the  Gascon  of  the  North." — "Lorraine  finesse  is 
a  clear  and  sometimes  dry  observation  of  men  and 
events."  — "  You  must  not  confound  Provence  with 
the  stony  South,  the  Herault  and  Languedoc. 
Provence  has  a  touch  of  Italy,  but  Herault  and 
Languedoc  prepare  one  for  Spain."  —  "  The  logical 
imagination  of  the  Touraine  country  (Rabelais, 
Descartes)  differs  profoundly  from  the  intellectual 
wine  of  Bourgogne  and  from  the  Mediterranean 
flash-in-the-pan." — "Anger  of  a  woman,  anger 
of  the  Mediterranean;  all  on  the  surface.  Ten 
feet  of  calm  water  under  one  foot  of  foam  !  "  — 
"  Panurge,  the  type  of  the  Parisian,  has  not 
changed  since  Gargantua.  I  have  him,  exactly 
like  himself,  in  at  least  ten  of  my  comrades !  "  — 
"  The    lie    in    the    North,    heavy,   tenacious   and 


I04  Alphonse  Daudet. 

gloomy,  is  very  different  from  our  lie,  which  runs 
about,  changes  a  subject,  laughs,  gesticulates  — 
and  ends  all  of  a  sudden  in  sincerity," 

He  had  a  very  significant  "  schedule "  for  the 
city  of  Lyons  which  he  saw  much  of  in  his  youth 
and  for  the  Lyons  temperament :  "  The  two 
banks  —  Fourvieres  and  Croix-Rousse  —  the  two 
rivers,  the  Sa6ne  and  the  Rh6ne,  mystics  and  cannts 
(silk-weavers).  A  tendency  to  general  ideas  on  the 
one  side:  Ballanche,  Blanc-Saint-Bonnet;  and  on 
the  other  the  taste  for  jewelry :  Josephine  Soulary. 
On  this  side  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  on  the  other 
Meissonier.  This  parallel  might  be  carried  on 
among  the  scientific  minds." 

"  Instead  of  losing  themselves  in  volumes  of 
verse  which  no  one  reads,  why  do  not  sincere  men, 
who  are  friends  of  the  real,  carefully  write  the  his- 
tory of  the  corner  which  they  inhabit  and  enjoy. 
The  novel  form  lends  itself  admirably  to  this. 
Customs,  legends,  that  which  strikes  the  infant 
mind,  the  part  which  forest,  mountain  or  village 
play  in  the  popular  imagination,  or  that  of  child- 
hood ;  that  which  remains  from  ancient  times ; 
that  which  has  not  yet  been  absolutely  levelled.  I 
do  not  ask  that  every  village  shall  have  its  Mistral ; 
the  great  poet  is  rare.  But  conscientious  souls  are 
not  lacking  who  might  do  this  admirable  business. 
We  should  be  stupefied  at  the  intellectual  and 
moral  riches  of  France.  They  form  a  treasure 
which  is  wasted,  all  these  customs,  dialects  and 
stories.  Oh,  how  fine  are  the  Gascon  tales  by 
Blasi ! 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        105 

A  book  of  that  kind  on  the  Perigord  country 
compactly  enough  written  dehghted  him ;  it  was 
recommended  to  him  by  his  friend  Senator  Dusso- 
Her.  I  can  no  longer  remember  the  title ;  it  was 
something  like  Le  Moulin  du  Frau.  He  praised  it 
to  all  his  friends.  He  lent  it  to  me.  It  is  a  com- 
plete work  in  which  the  author  gives  himself  up 
completely  and  relates  all  about  his  little  country 
with  a  prodigious  care  for  the  truth. 

"Why  don't  they  imitate  him?"  cried  my 
father.  "  I  follow  with  delight  the  consequences 
of  the  impulsion  which  our  Mistral  gave.  And  if 
Mistral  has  wrought  in  the  poetical  domain, 
Drumont  has  wrought  in  the  social  domain.  The 
profound  feeling  of  his  boldness  is  of  the  same 
kind.  A  return  to  tradition !  That  is  what  may 
save  us  in  this  contemporary  dissolution  of  things. 
I  have  always  had  the  instinct  for  things  of  this 
sort;  but  they  have  not  appeared  to  me  clearly 
until  within  a  few  years,  thanks  to  the  efforts  of 
my  great  friends.  It  is  bad  to  lose  one's  roots 
entirely  and  forget  one's  village. 

"  That  life  Maillane  led,  what  an  ideal !  Not 
only  to  cultivate  one's  garden  and  vine,  but  to 
celebrate  them  also,  and  add  to  legendry  by  glory, 
renewing  the  linked  chain  of  friendships.  It  is 
very  singular  that  poetry  only  attaches  itself  to 
objects  that  have  come  from  a  distance  or  are  of 
very  long  usage.  That  which  people  call  progress 
—  a  vague  and  very  doubtful  word  —  rouses  or 
excites  the  lower  parts  of  the  intelligence.  The 
higher   parts   vibrate    better    to   that    which   has 


io6  Alp  house  Daudet. 

touched  and  inflamed  a  long  series  of  imagina- 
tions that  have  issued  one  from  the  other  and 
are  strengthened  by  the  sight  of  the  same  land- 
scapes, the  smell  of  the  same  fragrances,  the  touch 
of  the  same  polished  furniture. 

"  Very  old  impressions  settle  down  to  the  very 
bottom  of  an  obscure  memory,  that  memory  of 
the  race  which  the  crowd  of  individual  memories 
weave  together.  The  old  impressions  unite  them- 
selves with  all  the  efforts  of  laborers,  vineyard 
tenders  and  foresters.  It  is  with  them  as  with 
the  roots  which  worm  their  way  along  and  mix 
themselves  with  the  nourishing  earth,  twist  them- 
selves together  and  mix  their  juices.  Didactic 
poems  on  steam,  electricity  and  the  X-rays  are 
not  poems  at  all.  Oh,  I  guess  already  the  excep- 
tion which  will  be  objected ;  the  singer  of  the 
future  will  be  mentioned,  the  sublime  American, 
lyrical  Walt  Whitman !  But  he  belongs  to  the 
country  without  ancestors." 

That  was  one  of  his  habitual  themes.  He  de- 
veloped it  with  a  vigor  and  richness  of  images 
quite  incomparable,  for  all  his  feelings  were 
brought  into  play.  The  love  of  "  his  Provence  " 
rose  to  his  lips. 

"  Leon,  I  'd  have  you  know  that  I  am  the  ven- 
dor of  happiness  myself.  When  some  young  man 
comes  to  see  me  in  his  arrogant  or  timid  way, 
with  his  little  volume  in  his  hand,  I  say  to  him : 

'  From  what  part  of  the  country?  '    '  From , 

Sir.'  *  A  long  time  since  you  have  left  your 
house  and    the  old   people?'     'About   so  long.' 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        107 

'  Are  you  thinking  of  returning?  '  *  I  don't  know.' 
'  But  why  not  right  away,  now  that  you  have  had 
a  taste  of  Paris?  Are  they  poor?'  '  Oh,  no,  Sir, 
they  are  comfortably  off.'  '  Then,  hapless  one, 
flee !  I  see  you  there,  undecided,  young  and 
impressionable.  I  do  not  believe  that  there  is 
actually  in  you  that  energy  of  Balzac  which  boiled 
up  and  fermented  in  his  garret.  Listen  to  my 
counsel  and  later  you  will  thank  me.  Return  to 
your  home.  Make  a  solitude  to  yourself  in  some 
corner  of  the  house  or  the  farm.  Stroll  back 
through  your  memories ;  recollections  of  child- 
hood are  the  living  and  unpoisoned  source  for  all 
those  who  have  not  the  master's  power  of  evoking 
thought.  Besides,  you  will  see.  You  have  plenty 
of  time.  Make  the  people  who  are  about  you 
talk,  the  hunters  and  village  girls,  the  old  men 
and  vagabonds,  and  let  all  that  gradually  settle  in 
your  mind.  Then,  if  you  have  any  talent,  you 
will  write  a  personal  book  which  will  have  your 
own  mark  on  it  and  will,  in  the  first  place,  interest 
your  comrades  and  then  the  public,  if  you  are 
able,  or  if  you  have  the  chance,  to  find  some  odd 
piece  of  intrigue,  well  carried  out,  to  put  inside 
this  frame.' " 

"  But,  father,  it  must  be  very  seldom  that  the 
young  man  will  listen  to  you  !  He  thinks  that 
you  are  jealous  of  his  future  glory;  he  has  his 
answer  ready  :  '  But  you  yourself.  Sir,  never  acted 
in  this  manner,  and  you  have  not  fared  very 
badly.'  " 

He  smiled,    thought   a   moment,    knocked   the 


io8  Alphonse  Daudet. 

ashes  from  his  pipe,  and  answered :  "  Some  of 
them  have  Hstened  to  me.  The  example  of  Bap- 
tiste  Bonnet  may  be  cited,  the  author  of  that  Vie 
d' Enfant,  which  will  be  continued  in  two  more 
volumes  and  I  hope  as  successfully  as  the  first. 
Bonnet  has  shown  himself  an  admirable  poet 
merely  by  recounting  what  he  found  right  before 
his  eyes ;  his  eyes  are  those  of  an  observant 
lyrical  talent.  Imagine  what  the  sketch  of  a  novel 
or  poem  in  French  would  have  been  from  his 
hand,  in  French,  which  he  understands  very  badly, 
and  moreover  on  a  subject  which  did  not  spring 
from  his  own  heart !  Yes,  I  can  cite  Bonnet  and 
many  others.  The  vendor  of  happiness  is  not  an 
obstinate  fellow  carried  away  by  theory.  From 
those  who  have  had  the  pleasure  of  travel  and 
sojourn  in  foreign  lands  he  asks  an  account  of 
their  impressions.  Profit  by  the  inestimable  op- 
portunity which  has  filled  your  mind  with  new 
sounds  and  colors  and  odors !  There  is  poor  little 
Boissiere,  now  dead,  whose  thought,  in  his  only 
book,  Fumeiirs  d' Opium,  gave  warrant  of  a  great 
mind. 

"  Bonnetain  too  has  known  how  to  take  advan- 
tage of  his  trip  round  the  globe.  It  is  quite  true 
that  Loti  is  an  author  of  great  talent,  but  he  has 
not  closed  the  path  for  other  navigators  and 
dreamers.  And  as  to  those  who  glorify  the  land 
of  their  birth,  here  is  Rodenbach,  the  most  ex- 
quisite and  refined  of  poets  and  prose  writers, 
moist  and  dripping  with  his  Flemish  fogs,  a 
writer   whose    sentence    has  the   tender   effect  of 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        109 

belfries  against  the  sky  and  the  soft  golden  hue  of 
reliquaries  and  stained-glass  windows. 

"  There  is  Pouvillon,  to  whom  we  owe  the 
complete  description  of  the  Montalban  district, 
so  full  of  charm.  Examples  are  numberless. 
Whether  nomadic  or  stationary,  let  them  all  make 
their  work  conform  to  their  own  likings  and  let 
them  chant  that  which  has  enchanted  them." 

"  We  are  not  far  off  from  La  Caravane. 
Such  conversations  make  the  days  of  travellers  a 
delight;  they  are  held  at  the  bend  of  the  road 
before  the  grounds  of  some  old  chateau  while  twi- 
light lends  to  nature  restfulness  and  calm  and  the 
servants  prepare  the  meal.  According  to  his 
own  character  each  person  in  the  party  becomes 
the  sponsor  for  some  theory  in  conformity  with  his 
own  moral  nature.  The  subjects  of  conversation 
are  brought  in  by  the  chance  sight  of  things 
without,  as  it  happens  when  we  allow  our  thoughts 
to  run  delightfully  hither  and  thither. 

"  But,"  added  my  father,  "  I  would  not  per- 
mit them  to  "philosophize  long  and  fatigue  the 
reader;  their  opinions  must  follow  the  same  curve 
as  their  adventures.  I  do  not  want  any  puppets 
crammed  with  phrases  and  stories ;  the  blood 
must  circulate." 

When  by  chance  the  vendor  of  happiness  talked 
about  politics,  he  made  a  grand  argument  con- 
cerning the  underhand  but  constant  warfare 
between  Paris  and  the  Provinces.  Some  years 
ago  Mme.  Adam,  my  dear  "  patroness,"  for 
whom    my  father   entertained    a  warm    gratitude 


no  Alphonse  Daudet. 

because  of  her  kindness  in  my  regard,  had  an 
idea  of  transforming  the  Nouvelle  Revue.  My 
father  admired  her  greatly  for  her  "  divining 
qualities,"  her  gift  of  prophecy,  her  ardent  pat- 
riotism and  those  many  and  lofty  qualities  which 
place  her  in  the  first  rank  of  Frenchwomen. 

Knowing  the  sagacity  of  her  friend  Daudet  with 
regard  to  everything  connected  with  periodicals 
and  newspapers,  she  addressed  herself  to  him. 
He  was  categorical  in  his  reply: 

"  My  dear  and  illustrious  friend,  I  myself 
have  pondered  long  the  idea  of  establishing  a 
Revue  de  Champrosay,  in  the  management  of 
which  I  think  I  should  have  the  necessary  tact  to 
distribute  the  work  according  to  the  powers  of 
each  one  who  contributed. 

"  You  cannot  be  unaware  that  one  of  the  gravest 
contemporary  questions  is  the  latent  antagonism 
between  France  and  the  Provinces.  That  showed 
itself  very  energetically  in  1870;  and  after  the  war 
the  enmity  of  the  village  churches  toward  Notre- 
Dame,  the  memories  of  the  siege  and  that  strange 
and  memorable  separation  between  the  heart  and 
the  blood-vessels,  all  these  rancors  were  continued. 
You  can  still  perceive  certain  echoes  of  this  in  the 
polemics  of  the  provincial  press,  that  press  which 
has  been  ruined  by  the  telegraph  and  the  quick 
distribution  of  news." 

lean  recall  very  well  the  turn  of  the  conversation 
and  the  general  sense  of  the  interview,  but  I  am 
powerless  to  reproduce  the  picturesque  army  of 
arguments,  the  lightning  flash  from  his  eyes,  his 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        1 1 1 

charming  smile  and  the  elaborate  gestures  made 
by  the  hand  which  still  held  his  pen. 

"  It  is  not  necessary  to  inform  you,  dear  friend, 
what  very  considerable  resources  the  Provinces 
contain,  material  and  moral  resources,  if  I  may 
talk  like  a  Deputy;  but  what  we  both  of  us  feel 
much  more  vividly  than  any  parliament  man  you 
please  is  the  necessity  of  giving  a  little  air  and 
life  to  the  members  which  the  head  is  by  way  of 
fatiguing  and  ruining. 

"  Decentralization  is  one  of  those  big  words  which 
say  nothing  to  the  mind.  Armed  with  your  idea, 
you  have  a  weapon  at  hand.  The  professors  of  the 
universities,  those  well-taught  and  well-informed 
journalists  whom  one  finds  on  the  actual  press  of 
the  provinces  will  answer  to  your  appeal.  In  that 
way  you  will  continue  in  your  office  a  sort  oi Revue 
Federaliste,  in  which  you  will  print  complaints 
from  the  districts,  in  which,  without  taking  sides 
in  their  village  squabbles,  you  can  keep  yourself 
in  touch  with  those  quarrels. 

"  While  you  are  talking  of  the  trade  and  indus- 
tries of  this  place  and  the  other,  of  agriculture  and 
the  harvest,  of  '  waters  and  forests,'  thanks  to  your 
activity  and  constantly  continued  effort,  you  may 
perhaps  succeed  in  re-establishing  the  communi- 
cations so  unfortunately  cut  between  the  hurried 
minds  of  Parisians  and  the  slower  and  often  more 
serious  intelligences  of  the  provinces;  in  our 
France,  you  know,  when  a  single  spark  glimmers, 
very  soon  there  is  fire  everywhere." 

On  the  spot  Mme.  Adam  organized  a  series  of 


TI2  Alphonse  Daudet. 

clever  inspectors,  who  were  sent  to  provincial 
functionaries  and  others  of  greater  note,  and  at 
this  day  an  important  section  of  the  Nonvelle 
Revue  acts  as  a  rally-point  and  editorial  chair  for 
utterances  which  one  never  heard  before.  At  that 
very  moment  I  was  commissioned  to  write  the 
opening  article,  "  Paris  and  the  Provinces,"  which 
in  a  certain  sense  I  wrote  under  paternal  dictation. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  as  my  father  grew  older 
he  would  have  carried  out  his  project  of  the 
Champrosay  Review. 

He  was  not  like  a  great  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries who  revile  the  press  and  are  ever  ready 
to  ask  services  from  it.  By  as  much  as  he  dis- 
dained advertisement,  self-advertisement,  by  so 
much  would  he  interest  himself  in  those  different 
kinds  of  information  which  in  a  few  years  have 
changed  the  whole  physiognomy  of  the  big  dail- 
ies ;  and  though  among  his  friends  he  had  polem- 
ical writers  like  Rochefort  and  Drumont,  he 
admired  the  spirit  of  order  and  organization  in 
Mme.  Adam,  that  universal  knowledge,  that  power 
of  action  which  stupefy  every  one  who  approaches 
the  great  woman  patriot.  He  was  never  happier 
than  when  those  "  cursed  politics  "  permitted  his 
old  comrade  Adrien  H6brard  to  come  and  chat 
with  him. 

What  contests  of  laughter  did  not  these  two 
Provencals  indulge  in,  completely  informed  as 
they  were  as  to  many  men  and  many  events,  and 
having  acquired  in  their  long  lives  such  experi- 
ence !     And  nevertheless,  without  any  bitterness  ! 


As  Father  and  as  Husba7id.        113 

Those  who  are  now  on  the  summit  as  well  as  the 
most  ordinary  reporters,  whom  he  received  with 
his  usual  courtesy  and  friendly  ease,  can  be  called 
in  as  witnesses  to  his  sagacity  and  his  delicate 
'♦  scent." 

No  one  better  than  he  might  divine  the  taste 
and  whims  and  changing  humor  of  the  public. 
No  one  had  better  studied  the  changes  in  the 
"  reading  crowd  "  which  is  by  no  means  the  same 
thing  as  the  active  and  noisy  crowd.  He  was  a 
partisan  for  the  complete  liberty  of  the  press  — 
"that  wonderful  safety  valve  for  secrets."  He 
used  to  say:  "  In  France  there  can  be  no  govern- 
ment capable  of  suppressing  the  written  word ; 
every  effort  made  in  this  direction,  just  as  we  saw 
during  the  Empire,  will  only  end  by  strengthen- 
ing irony,  putting  allusions  in  fetters  and  doubling 
and  tripling  the  wonderful  power  of  the  '  iron 
nib.'  " 

"  We  could  hardly  believe  nowadays  what  a 
universal  stupor  was  occasioned  by  the  terrible 
article  from  Rochefort  on  the  death  of  Victor 
Noir  —  that  thunderclap  framed  in  mourning, 
which  transformed  and  petrified  the  whole  capital 
into  a  multitude  of  motionless  figures,  reading  and 
weighing  the  virulence  of  each  sentence." 

He  took  no  part  in  Boulangism  because  he 
never  got  enthusiastic  until  he  had  made  for  him- 
self a  clear  and  independent  opinion;  but  he  felt 
some  interest  in  that  movement,  as  a  "  combina- 
tion of  a  suppressed  anti-parliamentary  disorder 
with  a  patriotic  impulse."     He  was  indignant  at 


114  Alphonse  Daudet. 

the  judgment  delivered  by  the  High  Court  of 
Justice  which  condemned  Rochefort  to  exile  for 
articles  in  the  newspapers :  "  It  is  the  low  revenge 
of  men  without  cleverness,  of  vulgar  politicians, 
directed  against  a  writer  of  infinite  brilliancy. 
They  pretend  to  disdain  that  pamphleteer  who 
was  nevertheless  one  of  the  first  originators  of  the 
actual  government  under  which  they  are  waxing 
fat;  but  they  fear  him  quite  enough  to  order  him 
into  banishment.  They  will  pay  dearly  for  that 
infamous  deed  !  "  The  Panama  scandal  undertook 
to  realize  this  prediction. 

At  home  he  and  I  used  to  joke  at  the  eager- 
ness with  which  each  of  us  tried  to  get  the  news- 
papers away  from  each  other  early  in  the  morning. 
He  read  the  papers  with  remarkable  quickness; 
nothing  that  was  important  escaped  him.  He 
could  not  resist  the  pleasure  of  writing  at  once 
a  word  of  congratulation  to  the  author  of  some 
article  which  pleased  him.  He  remembered  new 
names.  In  the  papers  as  in  books  he  warmed 
toward  every  appearance  of  talent.  He  wanted 
to  see  the  writer,  make  him  talk,  aid  him  from  his 
earliest  beginnings.  It  sometimes  happened  that 
he  reversed  the  roles  and  a  reporter  sent  to  re- 
ceive his  own  confession  was  put  by  him  in  the 
confessional. 

Many  who  are  famous  to-day  will  recall  his 
encouragements  and  the  genial  way  in  which  he 
reassured  timidity :  "  It  is  part  of  the  role  of  the 
vendor  of  happiness  to  give  good  counsel  to 
smaller  comrades.     When  I  receive  one  of  these 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        115 

young  men  who  with  difficulty  gain  their  bread  at 
so  much  a  line,  I  recall  my  own  beginning  and 
reflect  that  perhaps  I  have  before  me  a  man  of 
the  future,  a  real  talent."  He  gave  similar  coun- 
sel to  all :  "  This  trade  which  you  are  at,  and  which 
disgusts  you,  will  be  of  service  to  you  later;  by 
its  aid  you  will  have  penetrated  into  many  homes 
and  learned  to  understand  characters  not  a  few 
and  played  a  part  in  various  comedies.  Infor- 
mation for  the  public  such  as  exists  to-day  did 
not  have  its  origin  in  New  York  or  Chicago.  It 
sprang  from  the  realistic  novel.  It  corresponds 
to  that  need  of  sincerity  which  fills  men's  minds 
more  and  more." 

When  his  words  had  been  dictated  or  reported 
amiss,  he  would  say  indulgently:  "  Historians,  the 
most  severe  of  them  and  those  surest  of  themselves, 
often  make  mistakes  !  Why  should  not  this  young 
man  have  made  a  mistake?  Truth  is  a  terrible, 
fleeing  goddess.  Everything  that  is  in  the  nar- 
rator's inside,  everything  that  is  subjective  in  him, 
from  his  passions  to  his  vision,  down  to  a  boot  that 
is  too  tight,  wars  against  his  desire  to  be  a  faithful 
witness.  Consider  the  smallest  fact,  the  slenderest 
episode  and  observe  how  in  one  single  second  it 
changes  its  form !  Note  how  it  takes  an  entirely 
difl"erent  air  in  the  mouth  of  one  person  or  another  ! 
Remember  that  symbolical  story  by  Edgar  Poe  of 
the  double  assassination  and  the  multiform  inter- 
pretations made  by  the  spectators." 

It  was  one  of  his  whims  to  distribute  beforehand 
the  various  lines  of  work  on  the  Revue  de  Champ- 


ii6  Alphonse  Daudet. 

rosay :  "  It  shall  be  called  the  Champrosay  Re- 
view because  I  shall  not  subject  myself  to  the 
pressure  of  Paris,  nor  the  optical  angle  of  Paris.  I 
shall  endeavor  to  classify  events  according  to  their 
real  importance.  I  shall  confide  reports  from  the 
law  courts  to  such  a  one  as  possesses  good  eyes 
and  judgment  and  style  in  his  writing;  and  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies  to  such  another  who  has  the 
faculty  of  the  humorist. 

"  Many  writers  lose  their  force  in  imaginative 
fiction  and  stories  who  would  acquire  an  unexpected 
vigor  if  they  were  supported  by  reality.  Par- 
ticularly I  would  wish  that  my  Review  should  be 
alive  and  impress  the  reader  with  the  feeling  of  an 
active  organism.  I  would  like  to  pay  my  fellow 
w^orkers  generously  in  order  to  relieve  them  from 
anxiety  as  to  money  and  be  able  to  demand  great 
things  of  them.  I  would  give  an  opening  to  the 
utterance  of  every  eloquent  opinion." 

He  then  passed  in  review  the  unexploited  riches 
and  treasures  of  information  and  anecdotes  which 
exist  in  the  industries  and  various  branches  of 
trade  —  the  features  of  the  different  quarters  of  the 
city,  the  confessions  of  humble  folk  and  what  the 
chestnut  vendor  has  to  say.  "  I  would  see  to  it 
that  in  each  number  there  should  be  a  well-founded 
inquiry  into  some  injustice,  some  great  wrong  and 
abuse  of  power,  and  in  order  to  have  my  hands 
free  I  should  pay  my  railway  and  theatre  tickets 
out  of  my  own  pocket." 

He  was  prevented  from  realizing  his  project,  at 
first  through  his  illness,  and  then  because  of  his 


As  Father  a^id  as  Husband.        117 

work  itself,  which  entirely  exhausted  his  power  for 
labor  and  rendered  impossible  any  farther  care 
which  made  oversight  and  direction  necessary.  He 
was  compelled  to  be  content  with  following  the 
efforts  of  others.  Jean  Finot  was  quite  aware  of 
the  interest  he  took  in  the  Revue  des  Revues  and 
in  those  singular  explorations  and  generous  cam- 
paigns of  his  in  favor  of  the  Armenians. 

In  the  obituary  notices  accounts  have  been 
given  how  my  father  at  the  suggestion  of  Finot  had 
the  joy  of  saving  the  life  of  an  illustrious  author  in 
the  Orient  who  was  a  prisoner  to  the  Turks  and 
was  just  about  to  be  executed.  On  that  occasion 
he  did  not  get  up  a  manifesto  with  a  great  amount 
of  advertisement,  all  of  which  would  have  been 
noisy  and  vain.  He  preferred  direct  and  discreet 
action,  for  which  the  compatriots  of  the  unhappy 
man,  who  is  now  alive,  entertain  in  memory  of  him 
the  greatest  gratitude.  It  must  be  said,  certainly, 
that  Europe  has  not  spoiled  them  ! 

My  father  had  promised  the  Revue  de  Paris  a 
study  of  human  customs  entitled  Fifteen  Years  of 
Marriage,  which  would  have  been  the  summing 
up  of  his  experience  as  a  husband  and  father.  The 
little  group  which  forms  the  family  had  particularly 
enlisted  his  attention :  "  The  ordinary  circumstances 
of  life,  the  humblest  and  oftenest  performed,  are 
also  those  that  are  the  least  studied.  Aside  from 
Montaigne,  Diderot  and  Rousseau,  I  have  always 
been  struck  by  the  disdain  which  superior  intellects 
have  exhibited  toward  that  which  I  will  call  the 
*  small  change  of  existence.'     An  admirable  subject, 


ii8  Alphonse  Daudet. 

if  there  ever  was  one!  Balzac  has  written  Le 
Contrat  de  Mariage  and  L  Interdiction.  The 
drama  of  inheritance  is  complete  in  his  works. 

He  had  in  mind  to  write  a  pathology  of  social 
bodies.  Why  should  the  philosopher  elude  in 
that  way  familiar  problems  which  perhaps  are  the 
most  difficult  of  all?  He  said  to  my  brother 
and  me : 

"  I  have  never  gone  contrary  to  your  wishes  or 
interfered  with  your  somersaults  or  those  changes 
of  mind  in  young  people  which  are  sometimes  very 
difficult  to  follow  —  changes  which  make  grave 
men  indignant.  You  must  know  that  I  have 
pondered  over  the  rights  and  duties  of  a  father  of  a 
family.  At  what  line  does  his  power  end?  Within 
what  limits  can  he  exercise  that  power?" 

Every  day  we  had  reason  to  feel  the  benefit  of 
the  largeness  of  his  ideas.  We  gave  ourselves  up 
to  him  completely  without  any  drawback  and  with- 
out false  modesty.  We  threw  ourselves  on  his  in- 
dulgence ;  no  confession  was  too  dearly  bought 
for  us.  Reprimand  he  used  very  little.  Upon 
hearing  of  one  of  my  follies  he  still  preserved  his 
tenderest  smile,  and  then,  going  back  in  memory 
over  his  past  life,  recited  for  my  edification  this 
circumstance  and  that  similar  error,  which  he  had 
paid  for  in  this  or  that  way. 

Above  all  things  he  had  a  horror  of  a  lie: 
"  Don't  try  to  deceive  me ;  your  eyes  and  tone  of 
voice  betray  you.  How  do  you  expect  me  to 
counsel  you,  if  you  send  me  off  on  a  false  trail?" 
Then   he  added :    "  As  to  you,  my  little  fellows, 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        119 

I  live  again  in  your  youth;  this  prolongation  of 
life  is  delightful.  When  you  rush  up  and  kiss  me 
in  a  hurry,  wishing  to  elude  my  sagacity,  I  might 
enumerate  all  the  tricks,  one  after  the  other, 
wherewith  you  are  sure  that  you  can  escape 
from  your  old  father.  Punish  yourselves !  Give 
yourselves  the  necessary  training !  But  explain 
to  me  your  scruples  and  state  your  regrets  and 
tell  me  of  those  bitter  embarrassments  of  youth 
which  cause  one  to  bite  one's  pillow  in  the  dark- 
ness of  the  night  with  a  groan." 

He  thought  that  the  first  duty  of  a  father  was 
to  be  morally  the  comrade  of  his  son.  He  re- 
called with  terror  a  moving  incident  in  Montaigne 
wherein  old  Marshal  de  Montluc,  I  think,  is  in  a 
state  of  desperation  because  he  lost  his  son,  and 
never  gave  the  poor  fellow  a  chance  to  divine 
what  a  passion  he  really  had  for  him. 

He  listened  patiently  to  all  our  theories,  how- 
ever extravagant,  leaving  the  care  of  calming  us 
to  circumstances.  He  seemed  to  be  particularly 
desirous  of  seeing  us  think  for  ourselves,  out  of 
reach  of  all  influences.  For  in  the  domain  of  in- 
teUigence  he  had  a  perfect  horror  of  imitation : 
"  One  of  the  most  terrible  statements  is  that  made 
by  Lucretius,  namely,  '  that  the  human  race  exists 
for  very  few  persons.' 

"  I  can  remember  a  multitude  of  faces  and  of 
hours  spent  in  gossip.  I  could  very  easily  draw 
the  reckoning  of  the  new  individualities  and  new 
ideas ;  some  of  them  who  are  too  easily  impressed 
repeat  the  lessons  they  have  learned  in  books  and 


I20  Alphonse  Daudet. 

newspapers;  others  are  the  idols  of  a  party  or 
of  a  doctrine  —  what  followers  they  have  !  And 
what  a  delight  also  when  one  hears  a  sincere 
accent!  Surprises  are  not  lacking;  that  man 
there  whom  nobody  has  noted,  who  is  lost  among 
his  neighbors,  suddenly  enters  into  a  ray  of  light, 
starts  out  against  the  background  and  detaches 
himself. 

"  On  the  evening  of  a  first  night  the  lobbies  of 
a  theatre  present  the  image  of  life.  Each  one 
puts  his  neighbor  to  the  question  and  fears  to 
express  himself  without  support:  'Don't  you 
think  so?  .  .  .  What  is  your  opinion,  dear  mas- 
ter? '  ...  Is  it  not  a  strange  thing,  that  not- 
withstanding the  herd,  the  works  are  classified 
nevertheless,  and  a  division  is  made  into  the  hand- 
some and  the  ugly,  and  well  founded  reputations 
emerge?  " 

How  many  times  have  we  not  stirred  up  this 
difficult  problem  of  the  artist's  personality !  A 
given  man  will  enlist  great  hopes,  begin  with  a 
vigorous  and  novel  work  and  suddenly,  as  though 
he  had  stopped  because  worn  out  and  at  the 
end  of  his  inventiveness,  write  no  more.  The 
intensity  of  the  wheels  that  revolve  in  the  brain 
escapes  criticism.  Very  often  reflection  acts  as 
a  poison,  because  reflection  elaborates  a  work  in 
secret;  that  is  why  my  father  counselled  the  study 
of  nature,  its  forms  and  its  shades  as  beyond 
everything  else. 

He  was  nervous  at  thought  which  devours  its 
own  substance :  "  That  admirable  writer  has  a  sur- 


As  Father  and  as  Husba7td.        121 

prising  power  for  destruction,"  said  he,  talking 
of  the  philosopher  Nietsche.  The  constantly- 
bitter  and  sarcastic  form  of  his  aphorisms  also 
repulsed  him.  But  especially  he  reproached  him 
for  "  having  never  sufficiently  taken  the  air,"  i.  e. 
gone  to  Nature  for  instruction. 

It  is  only  a  few  years  now  that  I  have  learned 
to  understand  the  depth  of  that  doctrine  which 
forces  the  writer  to  go  outside  himself  and  not 
lose  contact  with  the  life  around  one.  The  first 
condition  requisite  to  intellectual  joy  is  the  organ- 
ization of  sensations  and  sentiments.  Weariness 
comes  quickly,  if  one  or  the  other  does  not  renew 
itself,  but  allows  itself  to  be  worn  to  the  bone. 
That  is  the  pitfall  of  analysis. 

Now  my  father  was  analyzing  all  the  time,  but 
he  stopped  before  he  became  tired.  He  had 
pushed  his  thinking  machine  to  the  highest  possi- 
ble tension.  He  extracted  a  most  surprising  use 
from  the  smallest  circumstances.  That  explains 
why,  in  spite  of  his  fits  of  illness  and  his  suffer- 
ings, in  spite  of  the  attacks  of  an  implacable 
malady,  he  preserved  to  the  very  end  that  second 
sight  and  that  freshness  of  impression  which 
caused  every  one  who  approached  him  to  marvel. 

It  is  quite  certain  that  knowledge  and  observa- 
tion when  carried  to  such  a  degree  are  two  grand 
springs  of  happiness.  The  deep-lying  reason  for 
this  consists  of  the  fact  that  one's  personality 
becomes  complete  and  bold.  One  feels  oneself 
all  the  more  oneself,  the  greater  the  number  of 
problems  one  has  tackled,  and  the  more  of  those 


122  Alphonse  Daudet. 

solutions  which  the  mathematicians  call  "  elegant  ** 
have  been  found  for  them.  In  that  sense  "  ele- 
gance" was  one  of  the  remarkable  qualities  of 
Alphonse  Daudet.  Moral  hygiene  was  his  pre- 
occupation. Wounded  in  his  body  and  con- 
demned to  a  restricted  existence,  he  might  apply 
all  those  cares  to  the  nobler  part  of  his  spirit. 

One  day  I  complimented  him  on  having  trained 
his  imagination :  "  Of  a  certainty,"  answered  he, 
"  I  have  always  imposed  as  limits  upon  my  imagi- 
nation verisimilitude  and  virtue.  I  know  well  its 
misty  domain,  those  strange  countries  where  fancy 
is  able  to  carry  the  heaviest  load.  But  a  novelist 
should  not  permit  himself  to  employ  the  mental 
debauches  of  a  lyrical  writer.  Besides,  before 
everything  else  I  demand  emotion  and  when  the 
human  proportions  have  been  overdone  emotion 
loses  itself." 

He  was  forever  praising  to  me  tact:  "  If  you 
wish,  it  is  a  minor  quality,  yet  nothing  is  complete 
without  it.  Tact  alone  causes  that  little  shudder 
which  runs  through  the  reader  from  head  to  foot 
and,  winning  his  confidence,  hands  him  over  to 
the  author.  Literary  tact !  Many  a  time  it  insists 
upon  hard  sacrifices.  I  have  been  forced  to  slash 
pitilessly  this  fine  speech  and  that  brilliant  episode 
in  order  to  remain  in  measure.  .  .  . 

"  But  what  is  far  better  than  the  application  of 
any  principle,  no  matter  how  good,  is  a  gift,  a 
feeling  of  what  is  superfluous  and  what  is  neces- 
sary, the  taste  for  harmony  and  for  proportion. 
Owing  to  the  complexity  of  our  impressions,  we 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        123 

moderns  have  lost,  it  appears,  that  clear  and  limpid 
observation  of  the  ancients,  that  immediate  real- 
ization of  a  sober  and  perfect  art.  In  Rabelais 
and  Montaigne,  in  whom  humanism  is  mixed 
with  an  intoxication  that  is  genius,  a  delicate 
flower  with  a  Latin  or  Greek  perfume  suddenly 
unfolds  itself  in  the  wildwood  of  maxims  and 
descriptions  —  as  it  were  a  miracle  of  revival. 
With  what  delight  does  one  not  inhale  it !  How 
one  admires  it !     How  it  lights  up  the  page  !  " 

One  can  see  how  generalized  were  the  counsels 
which  he  gave  to  beginners  in  literature.  That 
was  because  he  believed  a  spontaneous  and  indi- 
vidual effort  was  the  indispensable  condition  to 
success :  *'  The  preachments  of  elderly  persons 
only  serve  to  make  people  yawn  with  weariness. 
Every  one  must  win  his  brevet  at  his  own  expense." 

A  particular  line  in  which  the  "  vendor  of 
happiness "  made  his  appearance  was,  for  ex- 
ample, the  exposition  of  principles  by  the  aid  of 
which  we  may  avoid  envy,  tartness  and  bitter- 
ness, which  are  parasitical  plants  of  the  literary 
profession. 

"  It  is  certain  that  in  my  time  people  did  not 
devour  their  ancestors  as  they  do  to-day.  Money, 
dirty  money,  had  not  begun  then  to  trouble  their 
minds,  nor  yet  the  bait  of  '  big  editions.'  That 
is  a  modern  scourge.  People  did  not  have  any 
ambition  to  reach  that  enormous  diffusion  and 
start  the  rowdy-dow  which  now  seems  to  be  a  mark 
of  success.  For  us  success  lay  far  more  in  the 
appreciation  of  five  or  six  great  comrades  whom 


124  Alp  house  Daudet. 

we  venerated  than  the  invasion  of  the  show- 
cases." 

At  every  turn  he  came  back  again  to  that 
"  pleasure  of  admiring,"  the  charm  of  which  is 
lost.  The  most  brilliant  and  precious  souvenirs 
for  that  generation  of  writers  were  the  afternoons 
at  Flaubert's.  "  Pshaw,  we  shall  never  sell  our- 
selves, shall  we?"  JEmile  Zola  used  to  say  with 
a  touch  of  melancholy.  But  regrets  vanished  at 
the  sound  of  the  "  fine  thunder "  which  rolled 
about  all  sorts  of  discussions  —  a  tumult  of  ideas 
and  words.  Silent  and  "  hard  to  read,"  Tour- 
gu6neff  sat  by  himself  in  a  corner,  keeping  his 
actual  impressions  for  himself  alone,  but  esteemed 
by  all.  Not  until  after  his  death  were  they  to 
know  what  his  impressions  were,  and  then  they 
made  men  sad. 

Maupassant  already  showed  himself  timidly  and 
Flaubert  was  boasting  of  his  first  attempts.  There 
were  also  several  scientists,  such  as  the  illustrious 
Pouchet  from  the  museum,  who  in  that  society 
played  the  role  of  Berthelot  at  the  Magny  dinner. 

I  have  often  heard  Goncourt  or  my  father  regret 
these  warm-hearted  meetings  in  which  the  word 
"  confraternity  "  had  a  meaning  and  in  which  the 
philosophy  of  passing  events  ran  the  gauntlet  of 
half  a  dozen  powerful  brains,  which  contact  with 
one  another  and  the  desire  to  shine  roused  to 
fever  heat:  "We  kept  the  best  of  ourselves  for 
those  meetings.  One  would  think  to  himself:  I 
shall  tell  them  this ;  or  else,  I  shall  read  that  page 
and   take  their   advice   on  it.     No    truckling,   no 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        125 

servility !  Neither  pupils  nor  masters,  but  com- 
rades ;  respectful  to  the  older  men,  warming 
themselves  in  the  reflection  of  their  glory  and 
proving  by  their  choice  that  in  our  profession 
there  is  something  else  beside  money  and  vanity." 
I  recalled  all  this  at  the  cemetery  of  Pere  La- 
chaise  on  a  pallid  and  sorrowful  winter  day,  the 
while  that  Emile  Zola  said  farewell  to  his  old  friend 
in  a  few  sublime  words.  Let  people  discuss  as 
much  as  they  will  concerning  romanticism  or  nat- 
uralism, concerning  the  usefulness  or  the  defects  of 
schools,  that  was  a  fine  literary  review  which  united 
in  the  same  enthusiasms  Gustave  Flaubert,  Ivan 
Tourgueneff,  Emile  Zola,  Edmond  de  Goncourt, 
Alphonse  Daudet,  Guy  de  Maupassant,  Gustave 
Toudouze  and  a  few  others. 

That  was  no  cenaculum  where  disappointed 
ambitions  meet  to  dine,  that  was  no  scandal  shop 
where  absentees  are  torn  to  pieces.  And  when 
Flaubert  died  I  can  still  see  the  sorrow  they  all  felt ; 
a  few  days  before  there  had  been  a  reunion  of  the 
faithful  at  Croisset,  a  little  literary  picnic,  from 
which  they  returned  delighted.  Similarly  I  recall 
the  week  that  preceded  the  death  of  my  father 
and  the  dinner  in  memory  of  Balzac,  organized  to 
renew  the  fine  traditions  of  old.  There  were  Zola, 
Barras,  Anatole  France,  Bourget  and  my  father; 
it  was  a  cordial  and  charming  meeting.  Among 
many  subjects  that  of  death  was  spoken  of.  Bour- 
get recalled  the  fact  that  in  his  last  moments  Taine 
had  asked  to  have  a  page  of  Sainte-Beuve  read  to 
him  "  in  order  to  hear  something  that  was  clear." 


126  Alp  house  Daudet. 

There  was  a  unanimous  admiration  to  be  noted 
among  them  for  the  great  critic  of  Port-Royal,  the 
writer  of  the  Lundis.  As  we  were  returning  in  the 
carriage,  happy  and  excited,  my  father  said  to  me : 
"  Such  love-feasts  are  indispensable.  They  whip 
the  spirit  up,  they  beautify  things.  By  exchanging 
ideas  we  penetrate  each  other's  brains.  We  see 
the  same  fact  and  same  episode  appreciated  in  all 
kinds  of  ways  in  accordance  with  the  characters 
and  habits  of  the  different  men.  Poor  little  dinner  ! 
I  thought  of  my  Goncourt !  He  will  soon  make 
himself  clear.'' 

During  the  dinner  a  eulogy  was  uttered  over 
Cherbuliez,  whom  one  of  us  had  made  a  resolve 
regularly  to  imitate  in  the  future.  All  of  us  vene- 
rated the  modesty  of  that  great  writer,  who  has 
prosecuted  his  labors  consistently  and  written  so 
many  remarkable  pages  without  ranging  himself 
under  any  banner:  "Thus  you  see,"  murmured 
my  father,  "  that  no  effort  is  lost.  Those  who  rep- 
resent our  humanity  as  an  unrest  like  the  swarming 
of  an  ant-heap  tell  a  He.  This  evening  we  spoke 
with  one  voice  in  attestation  of  the  power  and  au- 
thority of  him  to  whom  we  owe  Ladislas  Bolski, 
Comtc  Kostia  and  twenty  magnificent  novels." 

According  to  Alphonse  Daudet,  in  order  to  reach 
happiness  there  was  but  one  path  only,  that  of 
justice. 

I  am  here  closest  yet  to  the  heart  which  I  have 
endeavored  to  unveil  to  you.  I  can  affirm  that  the 
sense  of  justice  was  the  most  certain  and  most 
vivid   stimulus    for   the    talent   of  my   father — if 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        127 

indeed  genius  is  made  up  of  excessive  sentiments 
which  come  into  accord  with  each  other  through 
the  privilege  of  a  harmonious  nature,  and  if  the 
art  of  writing  comes  from  the  fact  that  these  senti- 
ments set  in  motion  vigorous  and  picturesque  words 
and  put  to  work  a  corresponding  verbal  force,  and 
if  moreover,  between  the  convictions  which  the 
brain  sets  in  order  and  those  movements  of  the 
hand  that  fix  their  formulas  on  paper,  there  are 
direct  and  profound  paths  of  connection. 

If  moral  qualities  affect  even  the  form  itself,  I 
may  add  without  fear  of  mistake  that  my  father 
had  the  literary  style  of  justice. 

The  very  smallest  episodes  of  life  show  him  pas- 
sionately interested  in  what  is  true,  an  irreconcil- 
able adversary  of  what  is  false.  No  one  recognized 
his  own  errors  better  than  he  and  no  one  ac- 
knowledged more  readily  that  he  made  mistakes. 
He  was  constantly  repeating:  "It  would  be  a 
martyrdom  to  me  to  insist  upon  holding  an  in- 
iquitous opinion."  In  the  many  questions  that 
arise  in  a  family  he  was  taken  as  the  judge.  He 
seated  himself "  beneath  the  oak,"  that  is  to  say, 
he  listened  and  weighed  the  complaints  with  ex- 
treme patience,  turning  and  twisting  his  pen  or  his 
eyeglass,  his  face  gently  inclined,  sometimes  with 
a  sudden  smile  in  his  look. 

Once  being  completely  informed,  he  pondered 
a  few  seconds,  and  then,  without  solemnity,  but 
with  a  grave  gentleness  which  impressed  one,  he 
gave  his  advice  and  explained  his  reasons.  It  was 
very  rarely  that  he  did  not  convince.     I  have  tried 


128  Alphonse  Daudet. 

to  give  some  account  to  myself  for  his  instant 
action  on  the  mind  of  a  young  man  as  violent  as  I 
was,  one  so  often  blinded  by  self-interest. 

I  discovered  two  reasons,  one  instinctive  and  the 
other  moral ;  the  first  is  the  sound  of  his  enchant- 
ing voice,  which  was  such  as  one  could  hardly 
imagine;  and  I  was  not  the  only  one  to  submit  to 
its  charm.  It  had  so  many  inflections  and  such 
gentle  ones  that  it  seemed  as  if  several  persons,  all 
of  whom  were  dear  to  you,  were  addressing  you, 
each  one  with  a  particular  accent. 

The  second  reason  is  a  suppleness  of  mind  which 
allowed  him  to  enter  into  the  views  of  the  man 
whom  he  wished  to  persuade,  merge  himself  in 
his  nature  and  so  lead  him  to  the  wisest  results  by 
pathways  on  which  they  gradually  met.  That  is 
the  quality  which  produces  the  great  romancer, 
the  creator  of  types.  At  the  bottom  of  every 
genius  there  is  seductiveness. 

That  is  the  way  I  explained  to  myself  the  dis- 
like my  father  had  for  the  platform.  His  energy 
was  one  the  farthest  possible  removed  from  the 
orator's  art.  No  artifice,  no  hypocrisy !  He  could 
win  over  a  single  mind ;  he  could  not  persuade  a 
crowd.  For  a  crowd  some  such  speech  is  neces- 
sary as  that  by  Antony  in  Shakespeare's  yidius 
CcBsar,  which  we  many  a  time  perused  without 
exhausting  our  admiration. 

Another  speech  is  more  fitting  to  the  individual 
—  for  instance,  that  which  Agrippa  d'Aubign6  re- 
ports in  such  a  splendid  way  as  uttered  by  Admiral 
Coligny,  the  speech  he  made  at  night  to  his  trem- 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        129 

bling  wife,  both  of  them  in  bed,  whilst  the  tocsin 
of  the  massacres  was  sounding. 

There  again  I  find  the  Christian  mark  in  my 
father.  The  religion  that  inculcates  pardon  and 
sacrifice  substituted  through  the  confessional  an- 
other form  of  action  for  the  eloquence  of  the 
ancients,  a  form  better  adapted  to  that  individ- 
ualism which  may  be  discovered  in  its  germs  in 
the  sermons  of  Jesus.  Without  a  public  or  the 
prestige  of  distinction  to  aid  one,  the  problem  is 
to  influence  people  person  to  person  and  convince 
their  minds.  The  more  numerous  the  auditors 
whom  the  words  address,  the  vaguer  must  those 
words  be. 

By  addressing  a  small  number,  speech  becomes 
particularized  and  increases  its  chance  of  being 
more  exact  than  it  would  be  otherwise. 

Alphonse  Daudet  had  made  a  profound  study 
of  vanity. 

"  Although  pride  is  a  lever  which  lifts  the  entire 
individual  and  stops  at  nothing,  vanity  diminishes 
conscientiousness.  Pride,  which  is  a  tension  of 
living  forces,  may  exasperate  justice  or  brutally 
tear  it  from  the  heart;  but  vanity  destroys  it 
underhand.  Insinuating  and  not  to  be  grappled 
with,  vanity  glides  into  the  secret  folds  of  our 
nature  and  affects  the  least  visible  causes  of  our 
action.  Very  often  we  ask  ourselves  why  a  certain 
man  has  acted  contrary  to  his  character  and  with 
such  extraordinary  bad  tact.  It  is  because  he  has 
yielded  to  the  power  of  vanity,  the  most  experi- 
enced and  crafty  of  masters." 

9 


130  Alphonse  Daudet. 

Not  seldom  did  it  happen  that  some  fact  was 
observed  in  current  hfe  to  corroborate  his  conver- 
sations on  ethics,  offering  him  a  demonstration 
as  in  a  picture.  Among  his  acquaintances  my 
father  possessed  one  type  of  the  Vain  Man. 

"  He  is  coming  to-day;  try  to  be  present.  We 
will  make  him  trot.  It 's  one  of  his  happy  days, 
we  may  hope  to  get  some  remarkable  phrases  — 
some  of  the  phrases  which  spring  involuntarily 
from  the  ruling  passion,  like  those  which  Balzac 
used  to  find  to  suit  his  dramatic  moments." 

The  bell  rang.  It  was  the  Vain  Man.  Even 
before  he  sat  down  he  began  at  once  to  entertain 
us  with  his  "  success,"  boast  of  his  family  and 
himself,  bring  out  the  differences  in  the  situations 
of  himself  and  his  friend  and  suggest  the  presence 
of  a  malady  which  "  compels  the  most  active  to 
remain  in  their  arm-chair  and  deprives  them  of 
that  exercise  of  the  body  which  the  brain  needs." 
My  father  has  often  made  the  remark  that  vanity 
and  excessive  pride  end  in  cruelty;  the  moi- 
trinaires,  as  he  called  them,  lose  all  social  and 
moral  sense  and  no  longer  sympathize  with  any  one 
but  themselves ;  whatever  in  the  whole  universe 
stands  in  the  light  of  their  overwhelming  person- 
ality seems  to  them  to  merit  the  worst  of  disasters. 

Meanwhile  the  Vain  Man  continued.  He  had 
reached  the  point  of  tears,  thinking  of  his  own 
particular  health  while  looking  upon  his  sick 
friend.  Then  my  father  interrupted  him.  He 
assured  him  that  he  had  never  felt  better  than  at 
that  moment:   "  My  gay  spirits  have  come  back; 


As  Father  and  as  Husbarcd.        131 

I  am  smoking  my  pipe  again,  which  is  a  happy 
symptom,  and  I  am  working  splendidly.  Very 
soon  I  shall  go  out  to  Champrosay,  There  in  the 
green  foliage  and  in  the  sunlight  it  is  certain  that 
I  shall  finish  my  book  before  two  months  are  up." 

The  other  made  a  face.  All  of  a  sudden  and 
without  transition  and  in  the  most  natural  way 
in  the  world  his  malicious  interlocutor  related  to 
him  the  following  fable : 

"A  rat  full  of  self-sufficiency  and  therefore  en- 
vious in  his  nature  went  to  make  a  visit  to  his 
friend,  another  rat,  who  had  just  happened  to  have 
poisoned  himself.  The  wretched  creature  was 
turning  and  twisting  with  pain  in  his  magnificent 
domain,  but  the  visitor  seated  in  front  of  him 
suffered  more  frightful  agonies  yet,  which  were 
caused  by  his  despair  at  the  sight  of  such 
splendors. 

"  '  You  seem  to  me  rather  yellow? ' 

"  'Why  no,  nothing  is  the  matter.  It  is  so  com- 
fortable here  !     But  how  is  it  with  you  ?  ' 

"  'Oh,  as  for  me,  I  am  very  well  indeed,  I  assure 
you  !  ' 

"  And  they  both  of  them  died  seated  there,  one 
opposite  the  other;  but  the  envious  one  died 
first." 

During  the  recital  of  this  fable  I  was  very  much 
amused  at  the  hesitating  expression  of  the  visitor, 
who  only  understood  about  half  the  meaning. 
When  he  was  gone  my  father  laughed  heartily. 

"  The  dear  boy  is  longing  for  my  death.  His 
usual  exclamation  is:   'What,  you  are  at  work!' 


132  Alpkonse  Daudet. 

Do  you  not  feel  that  in  him  the  '  I '  amounts  to 
a  regular  hump?  Oh,  what  a  delightful  study, 
what  a  gay  and  thoroughly  French  one  it  would 
be,  to  write  about  men  like  him  and  all  the 
envious  ones !  One  of  those  damned  souls  con- 
fessed to  me  one  day  with  a  contraction  of  his 
whole  face :  You  don't  know  how  much  it  hurts/ 
That  man  absolutely  enjoyed  the  details  of  my 
pain  when  I  related  them  to  him.  I  perceived 
this  and  deprived  him  of  the  pleasure  and  from 
that  time  on  he  took  a  hatred  to  me.  He  was  at 
the  head  of  a  very  important  administrative  de- 
partment and  was  a  sort  of  autocrat.  Knowing 
his  mania,  his  employees  and  those  in  places 
below  him  never  appeared  before  him  unless 
groaning  and  lamenting,  pretending  to  pains  they 
did  not  feel,  or  with  a  bandage  round  their  heads." 

Numberless  are  the  accounts  in  the  little  note- 
books bearing  on  envy  and  vanity,  but  I  do  not 
want  to  take  the  flowers  away  that  grace  those 
marvellous  pages  which  will  soon  appear  in  print: 
"  When  I  read  my  notes  over  again,  I  am  aware 
of  the  difficulty  of  drawing  a  character  containing 
that  combination  of  follies  which  vanity  provokes, 
nourishes  and  increases.  It  is  all  gas,  emptiness, 
meat  without  nutriment !  " 

He  observed  with  attention  the  action  of  vanity 
on  children  and  women.  The  simplicity  of  this 
vice  in  the  latter  delighted  him :  "  They  are  just 
like  negresses  with  their  glass  beads !  "  He  has 
even  noted  the  vanity  of  sick  people  which  causes 
them  to  exaggerate  their  sufferings.     A  little  sick 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        133 

man  at  Lamalou  confessed  to  him  his  content  at 
the  sympathy  provoked  by  the  fine  appearance 
of  his  carriage  which  made  him  "  different  from 
the  others." 

"  Wretched  comedians  that  we  are,  and  dupes 
of  our  own  comedies !  "  He  remarked  how  rare 
are  men  who  are  simple  and  sure  of  themselves, 
and  especially  those  who,  when  in  public  places, 
are  not  in  the  least  troubled  by  the  fact  that  they 
know  they  are  observed  and  watched.  "  How  can 
we,  writing  men,  escape  from  self-consciousness 
when  our  least  gestures  are  spied  out  by  a  gossipy 
press,  and  when  people  seem  to  ask  our  opinion 
upon  all  sorts  of  subjects  as  far  as  possible  distant 
from  those  about  which  we  do  know  something !  " 

Actors  have  been  a  precious  mine  of  informa- 
tion for  him  (remember  Delobelle)  in  respect  to 
vanity:  "In  those  enlarging  mirrors  that  actors 
are,  one  sees  the  movements  of  body,  turn  of  eyes 
and  the  attitudes  common  to  all  men  —  but  de- 
formed and  enlarged  by  the  optics  of  the  stage 
and  by  the  effect  of  the  foot-lights." 

I  hasten  to  add,  in  order  that  I  may  not  anger 
the  most  susceptible  of  all  corporations,  that 
Alphonse  Daudet  had  the  most  affectionate  sym- 
pathy for  a  great  many  actors.  He  often  made 
the  remark,  how  few  among  them  were  mean,  dis- 
honest or  tricky  and  how  actors  help  each  other. 
"  These  creatures  have  a  factitious  existence,  real- 
ity has  almost  no  hold  on  them  at  all.  When 
could  they  find  time  to  rediscover  themselves  and 
to  become  like  other  people  between  the  repeti- 


134  Alp  house  Daudet. 

tions  and  representations  of  plays?  An  actor  who 
had  returned  to  private  Hfe  confessed  to  me  the 
deep  pain  which  that  change  caused  him,  hke  the 
bhndness  of  an  owl  in  the  noonday  sun,  and 
the  envy  he  felt  for  his  comrades  who  remained 
the  other  side  of  the  foot-lights,  that  mysterious 
and  enchanted  side,  where  human  illusions  are 
turned  to  flesh  and  blood." 

He  had  an  actual  affection  for  certain  come- 
dians. Amongst  others  I  would  note  Coquelin, 
Porel  and  La  Fontaine.  The  latter  astonished 
him  by  his  vast  memory  and  his  numberless  sou- 
venirs of  the  grand  period,  particularly  his  reminis- 
cences of  Frederic  Lemaitre,  who  was  the  king  of 
that  sort  of  man  and  type  of  his  profession,  a 
person  in  whom  the  fine  qualities  and  defects  of 
his  class  were  pushed  to  extremes. 

As  to  actresses,  my  father  always  showed  him- 
self amiable  and  respectful  to  them.  But  this 
very  respect  was  one  way  of  avoiding  that  famili- 
arity of  the  green-room,  that  vulgar  use  of  thee 
and  thou  which  he  hated,  just  as  he  did  everything 
which  was  not  sincere.  He  always  counselled  me, 
with  respect  to  them,  to  avoid  mixing  dreams  with 
life  and  to  fly  from  the  disillusionment  of  the 
reality.  It  was  his  opinion  that  those  of  them 
whose  business  it  is  to  change  souls  as  they 
change  costumes,  however  frank  and  charming 
they  may  be,  offer  very  few  guarantees  to  a  faith- 
ful heart.  I  was  never  able  to  make  him  admit 
that  that  very  suppleness  itself  was  their  charm. 
He  considered  it  was  monstrous  that  the  desire  of 


As  Father  and  as  Husdajzd.        135 

a  single  person  should  be  excited  by  sympathy 
with  the  desires  of  all,  and  that  one  should  admire 
in  a  woman  the  admiration  that  other  men  felt  for 
her.  That  was  one  of  our  quarrels.  I  persist  in 
believing  that,  well  informed  as  he  was  concerning 
the  theatrical  world,  he  ought  to  have  written  a 
sort  of  modern  Wilhebn  Meister  for  our  enjoy- 
ment, in  which  his  familiar  philosophy  would  have 
been  increased  by  various  episodes  in  the  eternal 
novel  of  comedy. 

So  it  was  that  if  Alphonse  Daudet  loved  justice, 
no  less  did  he  hold  exactness  high,  and  that  which 
infringed  on  the  natural  pleased  him  not  at  all. 
Ways  of  looking  at  things  form  as  it  were  a  chain. 
Vanity  and  affectation  are  perpetual  causes  for 
wickedness.  What  a  skilful  enemy  of  lies  and 
hypocrisy !  How  little  was  he  moved  by  false 
tears  !  How  difficult  it  was  to  make  him  believe 
in  them !  A  change  of  the  voice,  the  slightest 
trembling  of  a  face,  the  least  embarrassment 
in  a  gesture,  were  enough  to  warn  him.  There- 
upon he  himself  took  on  a  change  at  once  and 
became  harsh  and  severe.  It  was  insupportable 
to  him  to  know  that  people  were  discounting 
his  kindliness. 

He  made  a  special  point  of  what  he  called 
"  reversed  injustice,"  namely  that  which  people 
use  with  regard  to  rich  and  happy  people ;  it 
seemed  to  him  a  sentimental  monstrosity  like 
"  Russian  pity,"  which  is  limited  to  criminals  and 
low  women.  This  kind  of  affectation,  which  is  so 
often  found  to-day,  was  odious  to  him ;   it  consists 


136  Alphmtse  Daudet. 

in  showing  sympathy  for  those  unfortunates  only 
who  have  less  than  3,000  francs  a  year  and  con- 
sidering a  catastrophe  that  befalls  millionaires  and 
those  in  power  well  merited :  "  I  myself,"  said  he, 
"  have  often  to  combat  feelings  of  this  kind  in  my 
own  breast.  They  are  detestable  feelings,  just  as 
everything  is  which  produces  castes  before  the 
face  of  destiny.  Bad  is  everything  which  adds  to 
injustice,  though  it  be  an  exaggeration  of  justice 
and  an  ill-conceived  need  of  social  revenge." 

He  had  a  chance  of  noting  very  illustrious 
examples  of  that  "  reversed  justice  "  at  the  time  of 
the  disaster  when  the  Bazar  de  la  Charit^  burned 
down.  Many  "  friends  of  the  people  "  pretended 
not  to  mourn  over  the  "  roasts  "  at  "  ten  millions 
apiece,"  as  I  heard  them  savagely  called.  My 
father  was  very  angry:  "  Cabotinage  —  electioneer- 
ing views  meant  for  the  bars  in  corner  grog-shops ! 
Those  who  showed  pity  and  courage  in  all  the  horror 
of  those  cries  and  flames  were  the  humble  ones 
and,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  the  brave  ones  of 
this  world.  The  people  are  worthier  than  their 
representatives !  " 

Among  our  recent  notorious  hypocrites  the 
demagogue  and  false  Jacobin  were  the  object  of 
his  disdain.  He  had  seen  the  pothouse  politician 
close  by  —  one  trembling  hand  upon  his  heart, 
the  other  firmly  fixed  in  the  pocket  of  his  neigh- 
bor !  He  kept  an  indestructible  recollection  of 
such  men;  in  his  Sontien  de  Famille  will  be 
found  such  a  character  in  a  masterly  full-length 
portrait,  just  the  sort  of  man  he  knew  how  to  paint. 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        137 

What  nausea  political  life  gave  to  such  an 
enemy  of  poses  and  attitudes !  Perpetually 
shocked  by  the  spectacle  of  the  parliament  men, 
his  sense  of  justice  was  turned  into  anger.  What 
exasperated  him  more  than  anything  else  was  the 
placarding  of  big  sentiments :  "  These  fellows  have 
an  idea  that  elevated  sentiments  are  nothing  more 
than  booby-catchers,  and  it  is  only  necessary  to 
make  motions  to  suit  them.  I  often  ask  myself, 
how  it  is  possible  that  a  man  of  real  worth  like 
Clemenceau  was  able  to  pass  several  years  in 
such  surroundings?" 

Some  years  ago,  at  the  time  of  the  election  of  the 
existing  president,  I  went  to  the  Congress  at  Ver- 
sailles, On  my  return  I  gave  an  account  of  what 
I  had  seen.  That  frightful  witch's  caldron,  those 
livid,  grinning,  hypocritical  faces,  those  person- 
ages all  in  black,  wandering,  spying,  watching, 
begging,  prowling  and  baying  through  the  gal- 
leries filled  with  pale  statues !  What  airs  of 
importance,  what  arms  uplifted,  what  whisperings 
in  each  other's  ears !  The  greater  part  of  them 
seemed  to  be  worm-eaten  and  twisted  magistrates, 
mumbling  words  like  "  constitutional,  anti-consti- 
tutional in  the  first  place"  —  others,  in  the  midst 
of  a  group  of  grinning  idiots,  relating  terrible 
secrets  to  each  other  in  a  low  voice.  Throughout 
all  this  rabble  there  appeared,  clearly  visible  upon 
those  tricky  and  composite  masks,  the  vanity  that 
befalls  people  in  possession,  the  vanity  at  being 
able  to  dispose  of  the  future  of  poor  France. 
As  I  was  finishing  this  picture  my  father,  who 


138  Alphonse  Daudet. 

had  been  listening  to  me  with  brilliant  eyes, 
exclaimed  :  "  Oh,  our  poor  France  !  Whenever 
I  came  near  a  man  like  that,  I  was  always  stunned 
by  the  fact  of  his  worthlessness,  of  his  prodigious 
foolishness.  Except  in  the  rarest  cases,  we  see  in 
parliament  the  dregs  of  the  country,  the  doctor 
who  has  no  patients,  the  lawyer  without  briefs, 
the  veterinary  surgeon  whom  the  animals  are 
afraid  of  —  but  the  electors  do  not  seem  to  be 
afraid.  According  to  the  vulgar  expression  it  is 
just  so  much  "  cat-lap,"  and  our  mouths  are  full  of 
this  cat-lap. 

The  dislocations  of  these  wretched  jumping-jacks 
are  reproduced  by  the  press  and  carried  round 
about  the  world.  Ah  !  it  would  be  a  bad  outlook, 
if  we  had  nothing  else  but  our  national  repre- 
sentation to  represent  us ! 

There  is  a  certain  kind  of  man  one  often  meets 
who  put  my  father  quite  beside  himself.  It  is 
he  who  "  for  lack  of  a  label  I  shall  call  the  leveller 
of  opinions  and  events." 

While  there  are  some  who  inflate  everything 
and  see  an  army  in  five  soldiers  and  a  mutiny  in  a 
little  meeting,  etc.,  there  are  others  who  voluntarily 
diminish,  annihilate  and  take  from  people  and 
things  their  importance  and  vigor.  The  Pro- 
testant temperament,  for  instance,  levels  everything 
to  a  sort  of  negative  condition,  to  a  vague  neutral 
idea  and  a  perpetual  condition  of  "  not  quite  that." 
This  is  one  of  the  forms  of  Philistinism.  In  this 
category  may  be  placed  the  man  who  is  so  dis- 
proportionately proud  that  everything  which  turns 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        139 

his  attention  away  from  his  own  deeds  and  actions 
exasperates  him  and  seems  to  him  of  no  import- 
ance: "  Really  my  dear  fellow,  as  far  as  that  now? 
Do  you  really  think  so?  "  or  "  Are  you  quite  sure 
of  it?"  or  "Are  you  not  letting  yourself  yield  to 
an  excitement,  which  certainly  is  legitimate, 
but  ..."  and  so  forth. 

On  hearing  such  arguments  my  father  would 
murmur :  "  Tartarin  from  the  other  side."  But  as 
soon  as  the  other,  having  reached  some  personal 
adventure,  forgot  all  his  prudence  and  grew  ex- 
cited and  feverish,  he  would  dish  him  up  his  own 
statements  again :  "  Be  calm,  my  dear  fellow.  .  .  . 
Are  you  not  exaggerating?  Where  are  your 
proofs?"  And  all  this,  with  an  eye  glittering 
with  fun  through  the  short  puffs  of  smoke  from  his 
little  pipe. 

I  enter  into  these  details  in  order  to  sketch  as 
well  as  I  can  a  truthful  portrait  of  a  man  who  was 
remarkable  in  the  little  as  well  as  in  the  great 
circumstances  of  life,  one  gifted  with  a  superior 
sense  of  the  ludicrous. 

He  considered  that  the  sense  of  the  ridiculous 
was  indispensable  to  happiness :  "  Irony  is  the 
salt  of  existence.  It  allows  us  to  tolerate  beauti- 
ful sentiments,  which  without  it  might  be  too 
beautiful.  I  love  familiar  virtue  which  works  be- 
hind the  scenes  without  tunic  or  buskins  and 
without  phrases ;  I  love  a  kindness  of  heart  so 
discreet  that  it  does  not  even  look  upon  itself. 
For  pride  is  so  subtle  that  it  satisfies  itself  with 
monologues   delivered   before    the  looking-glass; 


140  Alphonse  Daudet. 

they  are  just  as  destructive  of  simplicity  as  a 
speech  delivered  from  the  platform.  I  love  char- 
ity which  is  so  hidden  that  one  can  never  distin- 
guish the  face  of  the  donor,  and  so  no  gratitude 
can  be  exacted,  which  alas,  is  the  vestibule  to 
hatred.  I  like  a  shamefaced  pity  without  pity's 
mask,  without  the  delight  of  the  hand  which  is 
stretched  forth  and  without  that  secret  thought 
which  so  often  exists,  that  you  are  happy  not  to  be 
in  his  shoes. 

"  The  person  who  thinks  about  a  wretched  one 
who  lacks  a  home  during  the  night  or  in  the 
storm,  whilst  he  is  warm  and  in  shelter  between  his 
blankets,  that  man  is  not  far  from  that  Sadism 
which  increases  personal  enjoyment  by  the  spec- 
tacle of  the  sorrows  of  others.  I  know  well  the 
false  look  of  virtue,  the  alibi-virtue,  the  gentleman 
just  getting  gray  who  from  two  to  five  in  the  after- 
noon distributes  a  great  many  tracts  and  some  few 
soup  tickets  to  little  working  girls,  and,  along 
about  six  o'clock,  goes  to  see  whether  they  really 
are  in  good  condition  or  not;  and  the  society  lady 
who  mends  a  pair  of  trousers  for  an  old  man  for 
effect,  with  her  eyes  fixed  upon  the  clock,  dream- 
ing about  some  wealthy  young  man. 

"  Oh,  charity's  mark,  charity's  grimace  !  Behold 
a  modish  *  visit  to  the  poor.'  '  The  Revolutionary 
goat ' :  —  The  dear,  good  lady,  her  dear,  good 
children  and  faithful  Bridget  —  the  voice  from 
the  throat  —  the  slice  of  corned  beef — grand- 
mamma who  is  coughing  in  her  alcove  —  the  new- 
born child  pressed  to  a  cold  bosom  —  '  Be  of  good 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        141 

cheer,  my  friends !  Here  is  a  pasty  which  is  not 
made  of  cardboard  and  here  is  some  Bordeaux 
wine.  .  .  .  Pluck  up  your  spirits,  .  .  .  You  there 
shall  be  a  forester.  .  .  .  And  you  shall  take  a 
part  in  a  play  of  four  acts ;   you  will   solve  the 

whole  social  question Farewell,  my  friends, 

emotion  strangles  me.  .  .  .  How  delightful  it  is 
here  in  your  house.  .  .  .  Come  my  children.  .  .  . 
Yes,  I  am  your  dear  little  mother.  .  .  .  Who  gave 
you  that  nasty,  filthy  thing?  That  disgusting 
little  girl?  Throw  it  away  at  once.  It  smells 
badly !  ' 

"Meantime,  the  benefactors  having  left  the 
house,  the  grandmother  scuttles  out  of  her  alcove, 
they  drink  the  Bordeaux  wine,  dance  about  and 
stuff  themselves  with  the  corned  beef.  Ha,  ha,  ha ! 
what  a  lark !  What  a  mug  she  had,  that  old  Brid- 
get !  Wretched  little  dwarfs  !  shoot  the  pasty.  .  .  ." 
and  so  forth. 

After  this  scene  of  comedy  my  father  became 
serious  again :  "  Irony  preserves  us  from  such 
follies  as  these.  It  teaches  the  benefactor  that 
he  must  not  put  his  title  on  his  visiting  cards  and  the 
virtuous  man  that  he  must  hide  himself  away  from 
virtue  even  more  than  from  vice,  and  the  pitiful 
soul  that  pity,  if  it  is  not  discreet,  is  the  greatest 
raiser  of  violences  in  the  world.  Consider  during 
the  Revolutionary  epoch  that  glittering  show  of  fine 
sentiments,  that  fashion  of  sympathetic  attitudes, 
that  zeal  for  sonorous  charity,  for  alms  in  met- 
aphors, for  equality  and  fraternity  in  Latin  !  Vic- 
tims are  careful  of  their  words.     But  executioners 


142  Alp  house  Daudet. 

are  drunk  with  a  tearful  philosophy.  Well,  in 
such  mixtures  as  that  one  may  seek  in  vain  for 
irony.  It  has  disappeared  along  with  '  mansue- 
tude,'  which  is  its  comrade. 

"  Has  it  not  a  tendency  to  evolve  itself  from  every 
extreme  opinion?  Women  do  not  like  it,  nor  do 
children,  nor  savages,  nor  the  common  folk,  nor 
heroes."  He  smiled  with  eyes  wide  upon  the  past, 
stirring  up  old  extinct  flames ;  and  in  that  smile 
there  was  a  multitude  of  continuations;  then  he 
continued : 

"During  the  war  of  1870,  which  was  my  great 
period  of  schooling,  I  was  able  to  take  stock  of 
the  anger  which  irony  provoked  in  the  common 
people.  In  my  company  there  was  a  question  of 
replacing  the  captain  by  way  of  election.  They 
begged  me  in  my  position  as  a  decorated  soldier 
and  former  member  of  the  army,  to  make  a 
speech  !  Imagine,  former  member  of  the  army  at 
thirty  years  of  age !  I  yield  and  ascend  the  plat- 
form which  is  odious  to  me  and  simply  paralyzes 
me.  I  begin  my  speech,  then  stumble,  get  all 
twisted  up  and  end  by  calling  out:  '  Oh,  get  out! 
I  don't  know  anything  about  this  captain,  any 
more  than  you  do  !  '  Then  I  climb  down  from 
the  platform  in  a  glacial  silence." 

He  stated  that  he  was  able  because  of  his  long 
experience  to  bring  aid  and  comfort  to  the  most 
touchy  people,  without  leaving  a  single  hateful 
recollection  in  them. 

"  One  summer  afternoon  on  a  marvellously  calm, 
warm  and  golden  day,  while  seated  at  the  cross- 


As  Father  and  as  Husbajid.        143 

roads  of  the  Greak  Oak  in  the  Senart  woods  with 
your  mother  and  the  children,  I  saw  at  a  little  dis- 
tance a  wretched  van  full  of  gypsies  —  the  children 
all  in  rags,  a  single  woman  with  harsh  features  and 
a  gloomy  man  who  was  peeling  potatoes.  I  took 
Lucien  by  the  arm  and  moved  toward  them.  (I 
had  my  alms  all  ready.)  They  saw  us  coming. 
The  woman  grew  very  red.  The  man  looked 
gloomier  than  ever.  I  seized  hold  of  a  brat  with 
eyes  like  a  torch  and  I  glued  my  piece  of  money 
into  his  little  moist  hand. 

"  He  dashed  away  like  a  regular  wild  cat. 
'Thanks,'  murmured  the  woman.  The  man  had 
never  budged.  But  I  shall  long  remember  this 
walk  of  the  benefactor  to  the  obliged  ones.  The 
obliged  ones  —  what  a  frightful  word,  one  which 
justifies  ingratitude  !  " 

This  chapter  would  not  have  a  fit  ending  if  I  did 
not  sum  up  now  Alphonse  Daudet's  opinion  in 
regard  to  that  great  human  problem,  the  search 
after  happiness. 

1.  There  are  as  many  forms  of  happiness  as 
there  are  kinds  of  individuals.  In  order  to  get  at 
them  and  teach  them,  therefore,  it  is  necessary  to 
see  and  see  clearly. 

2.  There  is  no  happiness  without  a  strong  no- 
tion of  right  and  justice.  One  of  the  moral  levers 
of  the  world  consists  in  this  axiom:  — Everything 
pays. 

3.  Seeming  deviations  from  justice,  even  exces- 
sive and  prolonged  ones,  are  merely  a  defect  in 
our  own  observation.     In  this  case  it  is  a  matter 


144  Alphonse  Daudet. 

of  too  narrow  a  combination  of  facts ;  in  that,  it  is 
a  question  of  some  particular  point  which  conceals 
the  rest.  Or,  again,  observation  dashes  itself  upon 
some  coarse  obstacle  and  does  not  go  to  the 
bottom  of  things. 

4.  There  exists  a  science  of  justice  which  is  not 
the  code  Napoleon,  but  the  dyfianiic  of  justice, 
which  is  nothing  else  than  a  search  for  a  perpetual 
moral  equilibrium.  A  man  is  not  able  to  have 
even  a  glimmer  of  this  science  before  his  fortieth 
year. 

5.  The  instinct  for  justice  is  equivalent  to  the 
knowledge  of  justice.  Very  coarse  natures  may 
contain  in  themselves  a  much  more  vivid  and  pure 
gleam  of  justice  than  very  wonderful  thinkers. 
That  was  seen  by  Christianity. 

6.  Paijt  and  pity  are  the  precious  helpers  of 
justice,  as  long  as  they  do  not  become  excessive, 
because  justice  always  remains  in  the  middle  term. 
When  it  is  extreme,  pain  hardens  and  renders 
people  insensible  to  the  outer  world.  When  it  is 
extreme,  pity  becomes  monstrous  and  loses  sight 
of  its  principal  objective,  which  is  to  solace  the 
sorrows  of  man.  And  lastly  justice,  when  it  is 
extreme,  brings  with  it  the  most  extraordinary 
consequences  in  the  direction  of  beauty  and  un- 
happiness. 

7.  The  search  after  happiness,  and  this  is  a 
capital  point,  should  always  apply  itself  to  others, 
not  to  oneself.  A  man  should  not  try  to  escape 
from  any  moral  responsibility  or  any  social  sol- 
idarity. 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        145 

8.  In  the  family  happiness  is  traditional.  The 
love  of  parents  regulates  and  transmits  it.  In  this 
sense  the  greatest  and  only  irreparable  misfortune 
is  "the  loss  of  those  we  love." 

9.  One  should  never  despair. 

10.  The  man  who  has  the  gift  and  the  taste 
of  observation  or  of  imagination,  has  a  greater 
capacity  in  himself  than  others,  whatever  appear- 
ance there  may  be  to  the  contrary.  The  consta?it 
exercising  of  the  mind  which  gives  suppleness  to 
ideas  is  one  cause  for  happiness  in  cases  where 
work  for  work's  sake  is  only  a  means  to  escape 
from  life. 

11.  Egotism  is  a  cause  of  unhappiness.  Egotism 
which  attributes  to  itself  the  origin  of  all  sentiments 
without  wishing  to  benefit  by  them  in  other  re- 
spects is  a  cause  of  unhappiness. 

12.  In  the  search  after  happiness  a  special  place 
ought  to  be  accorded  to  pardon  and  to  sacrifice. 

It  should  be  well  understood  that  my  father  did 
not  give  this  rigid  and  didactic  form  to  his  in- 
struction, but  I  think  it  is  my  duty  to  his  method, 
which  resulted  from  experiences  like  those  of 
Socrates,  Montaigne  and  Lamennais,  to  add  some 
apposite  things  which  often  cropped  up  in  his 
conversations. 

The  interest  of  these  few  axioms  and  others 
which  I  will  note  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  formed 
a  rule  of  conduct.  I  have  seen  them  applied  with 
a  consistency  which  astonished  me,  and  caused  me 
to  reach  the  conclusion  that  the  most  generous 
springs  of  action  in  our  nature  form  an  integral 


146  Alp  house  Daudet. 

part  of  our  tissues  in  the  very  depths  of  our 
personality. 

I  cannot  let  the  question  of  pardon  and  sacrifice 
go  without  insisting  on  them.  Life  without  pardon 
seemed  intolerable  to  my  father :  "  Down  here 
error  and  vice  grow  in  the  very  best  fields.  It  is 
not  sufficient  to  tear  them  up.  One  ought  to  forget 
their  very  former  place." 

One  day  he  explained  to  me  how  the  greater 
number  of  moral  faculties  correspond  with  the 
intellectual  faculties.  It  is  for  this  reason  that 
pardon  is  more  difficult  to  those  who  have  excel- 
lent memories  :  "  Sometimes  it  has  been  necessary 
for  me  to  make  prodigious  efforts  in  order  to  ex- 
cuse some  little  treachery  of  a  friend,  or  some  out- 
rage to  gratitude.  That  is  because  my  confounded 
memory  brings  before  me  phenomena  which  are 
past  with  a  frightful  air  of  life,  as  if  under  the 
bright  light  of  some  great  sentiment.  I  recollect 
things  as  well  as  a  jealous  person  or  a  criminal." 

La  Petite  Paroisse  is  a  very  far  developed 
.study  in  pardon.  As  was  always  the  case,  he  had 
taken  his  models  from  life :  "  Imaginary  deductions 
made  by  the  author  are  quite  large  enough  sacri- 
fices to  the  unreal.  At  least  let  the  source  be 
human," 

As  always  he  had  grouped  a  multitude  of  par- 
ticular examples  round  the  central  case  —  in  the 
book  in  question  as  it  happens  pardon  is  in  combat 
v^'x^h  jealousy.  There  was  that  gleam  of  sentiment 
which  Alphonse  Daudet  discovered  in  his  memory. 
How  true  also  is  this  other  sentiment  from  his  lips  : 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        147 

"  It  is  impossible  for  a  sincere  author  not  to  put 
his  whole  self  in  his  work ;  which  does  not  mean 
that  he  relates  an  episode  from  his  own  life.  But 
he  animates  his  own  ways  of  thinking  and  feeling  : 
he  dresses  them  and  makes  persons  of  them. 
That  which  strikes  us  in  the  world  and  that  which 
we  perceive  and  understand  the  best  is  that  which 
we  divine  to  he  similar  to  ourselves!* 

And  since  he  wished  to  illuminate  everything 
through  examples  drawn  from  reality,  and  since 
he  refused  to  follow  me  in  my  metaphysical 
digressions,  he  added : 

*'  Imagine  that  you  are  the  victim  of  some  piece 
of  ingratitude.  At  first  your  anger  is  vivid  and 
you  think  only  of  the  special  case  in  point.  Having 
become  a  little  calm,  you  begin  to  philosophize. 
You  think  of  all  those  ungrateful  persons  who 
exist  in  the  world.  There  you  are,  vibrating 
between  that  idea  and  its  contradictions,  ready  to 
weep  from  thankfulness,  ready  to  scent  out  the 
rancorous  and  forgetful,  the  debtors  and  bad  friends 
in  the  drawing-rooms  and  even  in  the  street !  That 
is  the  period  of  coijtcidence.  Then  it  is  that  you  re- 
mark and  discover  everywhere  circumstances  very 
like  your  own ;  and  the  hallucination  continues. 
Well,  with  novelists  these  various  associations 
reach  the  height  of  a  paroxysm.  The  knack  is  to 
lend  them  life,  make  them  step  forth  from  their 
abstract  and  purely  moral  regions  and  launch 
them  —  into  the  worldly  tumult,  as  the  Jansenists 
said. 

"  From  this  it  results  that  we  only  understand 


148  Alp  house  Daudet. 

that  which  environs  us  according  as  we  experience 
it.  We  live  two  parallel  existences  which  complete 
each  other:  one  an  existence  of  emotion,  the 
other  of  observation.  To  give  prominence  to  one 
or  the  other  of  these  existences  is  to  give  oneself 
up  to  unhappiness.  Happiness  lies  in  their 
equilibrium." 

The  farther  along  in  my  reminiscences  I  get,  the 
more  it  seems  hard  to  me  to  give  to  those  who 
read  me  an  impression  of  the  sincerity  and  serenity 
which  one  of  his  conversations  left  behind  it.  Con- 
sider that  my  father  always  chose  the  best  moment 
and  the  finest  situation  to  explain  his  doctrines. 
Thanks  to  him  I  have  in  my  soul  landscapes  which 
are  connected  with  marvellous  moral  dissertations ; 
with  good  reason  he  held  that  what  is  the  most 
profitable  in  sensibility  and  poetic  creation  is  just 
this  harmony  between  the  inner  and  the  outer 
world. 

"  Plato's  commotions,  those  of  Socrates  and 
nearer  our  time  of  Lamennais,  show  a  lively  desire 
not  to  separate  the  two  natures  :  human  nature  and 
what  is  exterior  to  it.  On  the  one  hand  the  skies 
and  terrestrial  views  and  their  moving  shades 
become  so  many  vigorous,  profound  and  unforget- 
table images;  on  the  other  hand,  noble  dreams  of 
imagination  add  their  own  mysterious  harmony  to 
the  trees  and  meadows,  to  clouds  and  rivers,  and 
become  so  many  inscriptions,  so  many  signs  and 
symbols." 

And  how  this  adroit  philosopher  seized  upon 
\hQ  fatigue  poittt,  the  moment  when  this  same  en- 


As  Father  and  as  Husband.        149 

thusiasm  no  longer  exists,  however  vast  and 
interesting  the  subject  might  be !  Then  he  sud- 
denly interrupted  himself  and  slipped  into  one  of 
his  delightful  pranks,  or  one  of  those  joyous  stories 
which  made  the  hours  passed  with   him   so  short. 


150  Alp  house  Daudet. 


IV. 

NORTH   AND   SOUTH. 

The  merit  of  having  placed  in  a  striking  light 
a  type  which  up  to  his  time  had  been  merely  a 
caricature,  "  the  man  of  the  South,"  belongs  to 
Alphonse  Daudet. 

Such  an  attempt  required  the  hand  of  a  South- 
erner, who  knows  the  strength  and  weakness  of 
his  own  race,  but  one  also  who  is  subtle  enough 
to  place  himself  outside  of  himself,  observe  him- 
self and  seek  in  his  own  gestures  and  springs  of 
action  whatever  in  them  there  may  be  indigenous 
and  national  and  different  from  others. 

Among  the  many  human  problems  to  which  my 
father  was  attached  and  to  which  he  devoted  him- 
self, it  may  be  there  is  no  other  which  he  has  so 
passionately  followed  out  through  its  different 
phases  and  aspects. 

"  This  question  is  not  interesting  to  France 
alone.  Every  country  has  its  North  and  South, 
two  poles  between  which  characters  and  tempera- 
ments swing.  It  would  be  just  as  exaggerated  to 
ascribe  all  the  moral  variations  in  man  to  questions 
of  climate,  as  it  would  be  silly  to  take  no  account 
of  pronounced  differences  which  variations  in 
climate  bring  about." 


North  and  South.  151 

It  was  while  making  researches  on  this  point 
that  one  of  his  master  qualities  appeared  to 
me  in  the  most  vivid  light :  "  Total  absence  of 
pedantry." 

Our  epoch,  which  pretends  to  be  liberal,  is  one 
of  those  in  which  perhaps  the  principle  of  author- 
ity in  intellectual  matters  is  the  most  frequently- 
invoked.  The  revolutionaries  merely  aspire  to 
found  schools,  establish  a  dogma  and  organize 
the  faithful.  The  independents  at  once  erect  a 
banner  upon  which  one  may  read  in  giant  letters 
the  word  "  independence,"  and  then  they  start  with 
denying  in  their  adversaries  the  least  good  sense 
and  rightful  intention.  A  new  kind  of  hypocrisy, 
"  scientific  hypocrisy,"  has  recently  come  to  be 
established.  A  multitude  of  unfinished  and  con- 
fused ideas  hiding  behind  obscure  terms  and  Greek 
and  Latin  compounds  have  become  the  weapons 
in  the  hands  of  insupportable  jackanapeses,  who 
brandish  them  on  all  occasions. 

I  have  never  heard  my  father  employ  a  word 
which  did  not  belong  to  common  speech.  He 
had  an  insurmountable  and  well  grounded  hor- 
ror for  newly  invented  words ;  for  most  of  them 
are  "  monsters,"  disquieting  examples  of  "  civil- 
ized barbarism,"  formed  outside  of  every  rule. 
However  wide  a  question  was  and  however  in- 
volved it  might  appear,  he  proposed  first  of  all 
to  remain  clear,  and  he  applied  the  rule  of  Des- 
cartes, which  is  to  begin  with  the  smaller  diffi- 
culties in  order  to  reach  the  greater. 

I  have  repeated  many  times  that  he  based  his 


152  Alphonse  Daudet. 

labors  upon  reality,  which  he  tested  in  order  to 
be  sure  of  support;  and  that  he  recognized  in 
very  few  facts  and  phenomena  that  certainty  and 
limpidity,  which  allow  them  to  act  as  bases  and 
points  of  departure. 

The  feeling  of  his  race  gave  him  a  double  touch 
of  certainty,  an  intellectual  and  a  physical  one. 
A  single  case  of  the  Southern  accent  delighted 
him  forthwith.  In  the  railway  coach,  toward 
morning,  the  apparition  of  olive  trees  and  white 
turnpikes  through  the  smoky  panes  made  him 
"  sing."  That  intoxication  which  the  solution  of 
a  mathematical  problem  gave  to  Descartes  and 
to  Pascal,  that  same  intoxication  was  felt  by 
Alphonse  Daudet,  the  "  imaginative  observer," 
when  in  contact  with  his  art  and  with  his  "  earth." 

He  loved  all  those  in  literature  and  art  who, 
remembering  their  origins,  beautify  and  sanctify 
the  corner  where  they  have  lived,  the  places  which 
they  have  frequented. 

Certain  people  who  think  that  that  which  is 
not  sorrowful  cannot  be  profound  have  re- 
proached the  Tartarin  volumes  for  their  exagger- 
ation. But  that  exaggeration  is  in  the  blood. 
Sometimes  it  takes  on  the  cold  form  one  finds  in 
Bompard  in  Numa  Roumestan.  That  makes  it 
all  the  funnier.  It  appears  that  the  tree  of  jollity 
growing  along  the  valley  of  the  Rhone  still  pushes 
two  vigorous  branches  toward  Touraine  and  Nor- 
mandy, one  branch  of  irony  in  Champagne  and 
another  toward  the  lie  de  France. 

My  father  knew  that  "  good  humor  "  is  neces- 


North  mid  South.  153 

sary  to  every  stage  and  degree  of  mind.  It  is  a 
kind  of  illumination.  To  this  virtue  he  owed  the 
fact  of  having  escaped  the  current  of  pessimism 
and  kept  his  own  character  intact.  Beside  him 
the  young  people  seemed  old  men.  At  any  mo- 
ment of  the  day  and  notwithstanding  his  pain  he 
was  always  ready  to  laugh  and  make  fun  himself 
over  the  vagabondage  in  which  his  imagination 
indulged. 

"  Hurrah  for  Latin  good  sense !  "  How  many 
a  time  did  not  that  exclamation  burst  forth  to 
close  a  discussion  and  sum  up  long  theories.  I 
can  still  hear  him  saying  to  a  friend  at  the  end  of 
a  philosophical  dissertation  from  which  he  had 
escaped :  "  Just  look  there,  my  dear  fellow,  look 
at  that  rose-colored  line  of  light  away  down  there 
along  the  crests  of  the  trees  !  is  that  not  beautiful 
and  is  that  not  perfect?  We  are  at  a  distance,  I 
am  short-sighted,  and  yet  I  can  distinguish  every 
leaf;  I  could  believe  I  was  in  my  own  country." 

In  his  Quinze  Ans  de  Manage  which  he  left 
unfinished  there  is  the  story  of  a  couple  very  dif- 
ferent in  nature,  a  combat  between  the  North  and 
the  South.  It  is  certainly  a  symbolical  work,  for 
according  to  him  the  life  of  France  itself,  in  a 
large  degree,  has  been  determined  by  combat  and 
opposition  between  these  two  elements,  so  different 
one  from  the  other. 

"  There  is  neither  the  same  way  of  feeling,  nor 
the  same  way  of  seeing,  nor  the  same  way  of 
expressing  oneself.  Sometimes  the  Southerners 
are  as  completely  closed  up   as  are  stones;    the 


154  Alp  house  Daudet. 

exuberance  of  their  imagination  wearies  them. 
Then  they  fall  into  a  torpor,  not  at  all  unlike  that  of 
drunkards  reviving  from  a  bout. 

"  As  to  their  imagination,  it  differs  from  those  of 
the  Northntans  in  these  ways :  it  mixes  up  neither 
the  elements  of  things  nor  the  kind  of  things  and 
even  in  its  transports  remains  lucid.  In  the  most 
complex  minds  you  will  never  notice  that  confused 
interpenetration  of  aims,  descriptions  and  figures, 
which  form  the  characteristic  mark  of  a  Carlyle 
or  a  Browning  or  a  Poe.  Moreover  the  man  of 
the  North  will  always  reproach  the  man  of  the 
South  for  the  absence  of  shadows  and  mysterious 
recesses. 

"If  we  look  at  the  most  violent  human  passion, 
love,  we  see  that  the  Southerner  makes  of  love  the 
main  occupation  of  his  life,  but  does  not  allow 
himself  to  be  thrown  out  of  kilter  by  it.  He  likes 
the  gossip  in  it,  the  light  frills  and  changing  faces. 
He  detests  the  servitude  it  brings.  For  him  it 
becomes  a  pretext  for  serenades,  delicate  and 
strained  dissertations,  for  indulging  in  teasing  and 
caresses.  It  is  with  difficulty  that  he  can  compre- 
hend the  connection  between  love  and  death  which 
exists  at  the  bottom  of  every  Northern  soul 
and  throws  a  mist  of  melancholy  over  its  brief 
delights." 

One  point  there  is  to  which  he  was  constantly 
returning:  the  ease  with  which  the  man  of  the 
South  deceives  himself  by  the  mirages  which  he 
conjures  up  himself,  the  half  sincere  confusion 
into  which  he  allows  himself  to  drift  with  a  smile 


North  and  South.  155 

as  a  corrective.  In  his  talents  one  may  find  the 
impression  of  that  kind  of  emotion  which  feels 
bashful  at  its  own  self  and  fears  to  go  beyond  the 
proper  point.  A  part  of  the  charm  lies  there; 
there  is  a  safeguard  for  a  reader  with  delicacy  of 
mind  in  the  guarantee  that  he  will  not  have  to 
blush  for  his  own  tears. 

He  used  also  to  boast  of  the  natural  eloquence 
found  among  his  compatriots.  At  the  smallest 
rural  meeting  one  might  be  surprised  by  a  stirring 
speech  given  in  a  strong  assured  voice :  "  I  did 
not  inherit  this  kind  of  gift.  My  tongue  gets 
twisted  if  it  is  necessary  for  me  to  express  myself 
before  more  than  ten  people.  My  short-sightedness 
has  something  to  do  with  it." 

A  subject  for  discussion  that  never  ran  dry  was 
the  problem  of  lying:  "  Is  it  fair  to  treat  a  man 
as  a  liar  who  becomes  drunk  with  his  own  speech, 
and  without  any  low  purpose,  without  the  instinct 
of  deceiving  or  of  getting  the  better  of  his  neigh- 
bor, or  of  profit,  endeavors  to  embellish  his  own 
life  and  that  of  others  with  stories  which  he  knows 
are  untrue,  but  which  he  would  like  to  have  true, 
or  at  any  rate  probable?  Is  Don  Quixote  a  liar? 
And  all  those  poets  who  wish  to  take  us  away 
from  the  actual  and  compass  the  globe  in  their 
wide-winged  flights,  are  they  hars?" 

Besides,  he  was  wont  to  insinuate,  among 
Southerners  people  are  not  taken  in.  Every  one 
in  his  own  mind  rearranges  the  proportions  of 
things  as  they  are.  As  Roumestan  says :  "  It  is  a 
matter  of  focus." 


156  Alphonse  Daudet. 

Alphonse  Daudet's  compatriots  feel  no  rancor 
with  regard  to  his  jokes ;  they  understood  well 
enough  what  an  honor  the  writer  did  them,  when 
through  the  power  of  his  pen  he  glorified  and 
published  to  the  world  their  twists  and  turns  of 
manner :  "  I  love  my  whole  country,  even  down  to 
the  food.  Don't  talk  to  me  of  heavy  dishes,  nor  of 
potatoes  and  weighty  joints.  An  anchovy  spread 
on  bread,  some  olives,  figs  and  an  aioli  leaf —  those 
are  the  things  I  prefer.  I  envy  the  lot  of  shep- 
herds, all  alone  in  the  midst  of  their  herds,  either 
in  the  wide  plains  of  the  lower  country,  or  on  the 
salted  highlands  of  the  Alps,  between  the  marshes 
and  the  stars." 

For  whomsoever  has  lived  in  a  "  mas "  down 
South  in  the  same  way  as  the  "  pacaces "  or 
herders  of  horses  V Arlhienne  is  a  work  very  extra- 
ordinary in  truthfulness.  There  one  finds  the  prin- 
cipal types,  the  shepherd,  the  "  baile "  and  the 
"  bailesse."  "  Naturals  "  are  not  rare.  It  is  very 
curious  to  see  how  Alphonse  Daudet  has  grouped 
all  these  elements  and  from  their  union  has  extracted 
a  moving  tragedy  in  which  the  vigor,  acuteness  and 
harmony  of  antique  poems  have  come  to  life 
again. 

The  story  of  a  young  Provengal  man  who  com- 
mitted suicide  because  of  love,  and  two  women 
calling  to  each  other  across  a  vast  plain,  one  with 
a  high,  shrill  voice,  the  other  with  a  deep  one  — 
that  is  the  origin  of  the  drama.  My  father  often 
spoke  to  me  of  it.  He  liked  to  work  back  in  his 
memory  to  the  directing  lines,  and  he  applied  to 


North  and  South.  157 

this  process  great  acuteness :  "  When  I  heard 
those  two  voices  of  women  at  twilight  alternating 
through  the  blue  space,  I  felt  that  they  had  im- 
pressed me  in  a  singular  way,  and  the  plot  of 
L ArUsienne  appeared  to  me  as  if  in  a  sudden 
hallucination.  In  the  same  way  one  evening,  just 
as  the  day  ended,  in  front  of  the  rose-colored  and 
gilded  ruins  of  the  Tuileries,  I  had  a  vision  of 
Rois  en  Exit  and  of  that  formula  which  closes 
my  book :   '  A  mighty  thing  lies  dead.' 

This  problem  of  the  beginning  of  a  work  and 
of  the  earliest  spark  of  suggestion  occupied  us  very 
often.  My  father  thought  that  Edgar  Poe  in  his 
explanation  of  The  Raven  had  forced  the  note 
and  used  his  imagination  after  the  first  imagining: 

"  I  believe  that  in  the  case  of  all  creators  there 
are  accumulations  of  sentient  force  made  without 
their  knowledge.  Their  nerves,  in  a  state  of  high 
excitation,  register  visions,  colors,  forms  and  odors 
in  those  half  realized  reservoirs  which  are  the 
treasuries  of  poets.  All  of  a  sudden,  through  some 
influence  or  emotion,  through  some  accident  of 
thought,  these  impressions  meet  each  other  with 
the  suddenness  of  a  chemical  combination.  It  has 
generally  happened  in  that  way  with  me.  I  have 
passed  months  and  months  in  arranging  a  drama 
or  book  which  emerged  in  one  single  second  and 
emerged  with  all  its  details  complete  before  my 
astonished  mind.  The  more  ardent  the  imagina- 
tion, the  more  sudden  and  unexpected  are  these 
pictures.  The  entire  work  of  Balzac  pulsates  with 
a  fever  of  discovery  and  of  impromptu." 


158  Alphonse  Daudet. 

I  called  his  attention  to  the  fact  that  this  is  a 
kind  of  "  secondary  "  dream  and  that,  in  the  case 
of  poets,  reality  and  recollection,  living  persons 
and  phantoms  are  constantly  crossing  and  chang- 
ing each  other,  and  preserve  nothing  in  common 
at  last  except  the  kind  of  lyrical  power  which  en- 
larges the  features,  the  speech  and  the  surround- 
ings and  arouses  enthusiasm. 

My  father  added :  "  This  lyrical  gift,  this  deep- 
seated  energy  are  perhaps  nothing  more  than  a 
very  profound  feeling  of  race  and  origins.  Goethe 
is  the  complete  German  soul.  It  seems  as  if  the 
blood  of  Lord  Byron  carries  in  its  flood  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  rage  and  the  exasperated  imaginings  of  an 
entire  people.  Mistral  is  the  exact  mirror  of  the 
South.  .  .  ." 

After  a  few  moments  of  reflection  he  continued 
modestly: 

"  Suppose  we  look  to  little  persons  for  great 
explanations.  When  I  want  to  tune  up  my  brain 
and  give  it  tone,  I  have  recourse  to  what  I  have 
seen  in  my  youth.  It  is  a  habit  my  mind  has  taken 
upon  itself  to  give  a  place  where  every  sentiment 
has  its  stand.  Words  like  "  love,"  "  felicity," 
"faith,"  "desire,"  do  not  remain  inside  of  me  in  a 
state  of  abstraction.  They  take  figures  to  them- 
selves and  take  part  in  events.  Well,  the  light  which 
environs  them  is  always  the  light  of  my  own  country. 
It  is  beneath  the  sky  of  Provence  that  I  establish 
those  traits  of  heroism,  obligation  and  generosity. 
In  order  that  I  may  reach  the  point  of  the  state  of 
trance  and  inspiration,  I  must  have  the  sunlight 


North  and  South.  159 

such  as  exists  down  there,  and  even  in  the  course 
of  extreme  suffering  I  keep  recalling  to  myself 
those  turnpikes  at  white  heat  charged  with  a  raw 
intensity  which  burns  me  and  is  my  despair." 

He  sang  the  praise  of  heat:  "  Heat  brings  our 
temperaments  to  flowering,  to  fruit  and  to  burgeon- 
ing. It  gives  to  the  human  being  his  own  particu- 
lar perfume  and  to  sentiments  their  vehemence. 
When  accumulated  in  an  individual  and  in  a  race, 
it  acts  like  a  subtler  kind  of  alcohol,  or  like  some 
delicate  opium;  it  transfigures  and  renders  divine. 
It  does  not  take  from  the  delicate  shades  of  a 
character  but  renders  them  finer  and  more  fugitive, 
just  as  it  supports  the  great  curtain  of  creepers  in 
the  forests  of  the  tropics  and  at  the  same  time  the 
army  of  giants ;  and  the  enormous  serpent  sleeps 
in  peace  through  excess  of  happiness,  the  while 
his  scales  glitter  and   gleam. 

"  In  the  South  laziness  has  invented  the  '  ca- 
gnard,'  that  little  corner  built  of  the  stalks  of  the 
cane,  in  which  people  lie  torpid  like  boa-con- 
strictors and  roast  themselves  in  the  sun." 

Then  his  face  darkened  :  "  These  sensations 
have  to  be  paid  for  later.  We,  the  transplanted 
ones,  are  seized  upon  by  this  homicidal  North 
with  its  mists  and  rheumatism,  its  mournful  rains 
and  sleet.  Wet  outside,  we  are  burning  within 
and  are  the  prey  of  a  twofold  nature.  Then  our 
impressions  become  more  tender.  The  North  is 
difficult  on  the  question  of  the  choice  of  words, 
their  value  and  their  place  in  the  sentence,  much 
more  so  than  the  lazy,  voluptuous  South.     This 


i6o  Alphonse  Daudet. 

was  the  cause  of  Baudelaire's  suffering,  who 
learned  to  know  the  exuberant  nature  and  power 
of  heat  in  the  course  of  his  travels,  and  when  he 
returned  to  his  own  country,  searched  the  whole 
vocabulary  for  those  vanished  charms,  at  the 
expense  of  his  own  brain : 

"  '  Le  monde  s'endort  dans  une  chaude  lumi^re.' "  ^ 

So  it  was  that  the  "  transplanted  ones  "  had  the 
benefit  of  his  tender  consideration :  "  Such  is  the 
mystery  of  origin,  that  sometimes  the  traveller  in  a 
distant  land  finds  again  his  unknown  stock  and 
blood  and  everything  else  that  he  has  loved  and 
admired  since  his  cradle,  but  which  he  knew  only 
in  his  dreams.  What  delicious  intoxication  to  live 
in  the  midst  of  a  wonder  which  has  turned  true, 
drink  in  perfumes  and  enjoy  the  savor  of  a  land- 
scape which  had  seemed  forever  reserved  for  the 
kingdom  of  dreams !  Sometimes  music  exalts 
me  in  this  way.  I  penetrate  to  those  states  of 
the  soul  from  which  a  thousand  closed  gates  have 
separated  me,  gates  through  which  I  only  heard 
confused  and  vague  murmurs  before.  And  then 
when  one  comes  back  from  that  region,  it  is  sor- 
rowful to  find  oneself  again  in  the  ordinary  world, 
where  beauty  is  rare  and  transports  are  fleeting." 

I  took  advantage  of  his  happy  frame  of  mind 
to  demonstrate  to  him  that  metaphysics  also  were 
a  kind  of  intoxication  akin  to  music  and  are  capa- 
ble of  furnishing  very  similar  pleasure. 

**  But,"  said  he,  "  if  I  understand  you  rightly, 

^  "  The  whole  world  slumbers  in  the  torrid  light." 


North  and  South.  i6i 

these  pleasures  of  reasoning  may  end  in  a  state  of 
mind  which  we  find  elsewhere  celebrated  by  Budd- 
hism, a  colorless  state  without  joy  or  pain,  through 
which  the  swift  splendors  of  thought  pass  like 
falling  stars.  Well,  the  man  of  the  South  is  an- 
tagonistic to  a  paradise  of  that  sort.  The  vein  of 
true  feeling  with  us  is  frankly  and  forever  open  — 
but  open  to  impressions  of  life.  The  other  side 
which  belongs  to  abstraction  and  logic,  loses  itself, 
so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  in  mists." 

Then  following  his  usual  method  he  descended 
from  those  extreme  regions  toward  comic  or 
touching  observations,  which  are  able  to  make 
one  love  reality. 

"  Violent  and  timid  "  —  these  words  return  many 
times  in  his  little  note-books.  My  father  had  col- 
lected a  great  number  of  examples  of  these  "  feel- 
ings made  supple,"  which  as  he  explained,  balance 
themselves  in  some  characters  and  often  give  a 
contradictory  air  to  actions :  — 

"  Timidity  slowly  accumulates  painful  impres- 
sions of  all  kinds ;  for  example,  he  has  gone  into 
a  shop  and  has  not  known  how  to  ask  for  what  he 
wants,  or  else,  embarrassed  by  his  Southern  accent, 
he  has  permitted  the  shop  people  to  foist  upon 
him  half  the  articles  on  the  shelves.  Or  he  has 
met  a  friend  whose  talk  has  wounded  him  and  he 
has  not  been  able  to  say  so.  Or  he  has  wished 
to  take  a  cab,  but  he  has  not  dared  to  make  the 
necessary  gestures  or  signals. 

"  Now  he  has  returned  to  his  own  house  and  is 
at  rest  with  his  wife  and  children.     But  at  the  least 


1 62  AlpJi07ise  Datidet. 

annoying  observation  the  boiler  bursts.  He  loses 
his  head  and  throws  the  plates  about.  The  sauce 
slops  over,  the  children  yell,  the  servants  are  in 
terror.  That  is  the  crisis.  It  stops  almost  as  quickly 
as  it  has  begun,  with  a  lot  of  tears  and  regrets  and 
promises  and  transports  of  tenderness  and  love. 
Sometimes  the  man  goes  to  bed  and  begs  for  a 
cup  of  beef  tea  to  put  himself  in  condition  again. 

"  If,"  he  continued,  "  the  man  and  his  wife  come 
from  the  South,  this  little  drama  has  very  slight 
importance.  But  if  the  wife  comes  from  the  North 
or  vice  versa,  there  appears  a  phenomenon  of 
weariness ;  tenderness  gives  out ;  the  married  cou- 
ple separates ;  or  in  other  cases  there  appears  a 
phenomenon  of  contagion.  Both  of  them  become 
violent  and  that  is  the  better  solution  of  the  two." 

In  the  most  exact  and  gayest  way  he  mimicked 
the  scenes  of  fury  which  quickly  vanished  and  the 
alternations  of  extreme  tenderness  and  of  wrath 
which  in  the  South  constitute  the  small  change 
of  conjugal  life. 

In  Nu7)ta  Rownestan,  Aunt  Portal,  like  a  good 
many  other  characters,  is  a  family  portrait,  whose 
reality  was  of  such  a  powerful  sort  that  it  was  im- 
possible for  him  to  make  the  reminiscences  of  her 
imperceptible :  "  Ah,  what  a  power  in  the  thing 
which  has  been  seen  and  observed! — yes,  down 
to  the  color  of  the  hair,  shape  of  the  nose,  the 
favorite  habit,  or  a  grimace,  which  seemed  to  be 
necessary  and  indeed  indispensable  to  the  sketch. 
That  marvellous  artist,  Nature,  when  she  accentu- 
ates   a   character,  rounds  out  the   physical  traits 


North  and  South.  163 

by  moral  characteristics  in  such  a  way  that  the 
simplest  modification  of  a  portrait  has  an  air  of 
deception.  The  individual  and  type  carry  along 
with  it  their  furniture,  clothes,  follies  and,  in  fact, 
their  complete  framework.  And  the  writer  who 
is  not  haunted  by  the  necessity  of  being  exact,  by 
tfuth  in  detail  and  the  actual  relief,  that  man  is 
not  a  novelist." 

I  will  add  here  a  remark  which  frequently  re- 
turned to  his  lips :  "  There  is  an  error  often  found 
among  prose  writers  which  consists  in  believing 
that  the  gift  of  style  brings  with  it  the  power  to 
create  types :  But  the  means  are  absolutely  differ- 
ent. In  general  a  talented  man  can  tell  a  story 
with  himself  in  it,  and  if  he  is  clever  he  will  give 
titles  and  springs  of  action  to  the  different  parts 
of  his  composition.  He  will  divide  himself  into 
different  parts,  some  of  which  are  antagonistic, 
and  these  parts  will  battle  and  discuss  and  act, 
sometimes  with  eloquence ;  but  never  do  they 
give  us  the  illusion  of  life. 

"  I  call  such  writers  essayists  and  I  greatly  pre- 
fer their  studies  of  ethics  or  literature  to  their 
creative  attempts,  which  for  the  most  part  are 
abortive,  or  turn  aside  from  the  path,  or  stop 
half  way." 

"  As  to  the  writer  of  romances,  that  is  quite 
another  matter.  Imagination  is  necessary  to  him, 
because  without  ceasing  he  must  reconstruct  an 
animal  from  a  single  bone,  forge  a  sentiment  from 
a  look,  a  word,  a  gesture;  he  must  divine  from 
an  attitude  some  passion  or  vice  and  give  to  his 


164  Alphonse  Daudet. 

account  that  harmony  and  amplitude  which  are 
the  generalization  of  some  particular  event  and 
trace  the  signs  of  fate  behind  the  characters  upon 
the  wall. 

"  Exactness  is  necessary  to  him  because  he  must 
not  dislocate  either  his  heroes  or  his  heroines,  in 
whom  he  must  preserve  their  logical  and  senti- 
mental tones  and  must  respect  the  conditions  of 
life  and  likelihood  at  peril  of  driving  the  reader 
away,  and  finally  because  before  everything  else 
he  must  place  a  guard  over  the  structure  of  his 
work,  that  inner  architecture  without  which  there 
is  nothing  but  disorder  and  chaos. 

"  Observation  is  necessary  to  him  because  it  is 
necessary  that  observation  shall  make  of  each 
character  a  mirror,  in  which  humanity  shall  recog- 
nize itself,  and  because  it  will  enrich  the  story, 
the  emotion  and  even  the  pathetic  parts  with 
singular  and  direct  circumstances. 

"  But  another  virtue  is  necessary  which  has 
neither  name  nor  label,  more  necessary  than  the 
imaginatioji  or  exactness  or  observatioji,  namely, 
that  power  of  hypocrisy  (let  us  use  the  word  in 
its  Greek  sense)  which  allows  the  author  to  slip 
into  the  very  skin  of  his  characters,  appropriate 
their  turn  of  mind,  their  habits,  gestures,  and  to 
talk  according  to  their  formulas,  that  same  faculty 
which  made  Shakespeare  exist  by  turns  as  Anthony 
and  Cleopatra  and  as  Desdemona  and  Polonius, 
and  allowed  Balzac  to  be  Lucien,  or  a  few  seconds 
afterward,  both  Marsay  and  the  unforgettable  ^zV/ 
with  the  golden  eyes. 


North  and  South.  165 

"  The  more  I  ponder  upon  it,"  said  my  father 
with  energy,  "  the  more  this  gift  seems  to  me 
primordial,  indispensable  and  irreplaceable.  With- 
out that  we  remain  outside  our  creations,  and  these 
retain  something  borrowed,  something  factitious, 
which  cannot  deceive  the  simplest  of  readers. 
Without  that  a  man  may  be  able  to  fix  a  single 
time  some  unforgettable  type,  on  condition  that 
this  type  is  the  nature  of  the  author  himself,  or 
his  contrary,  or  a  part  of  his  nature  enlarged ;  but 
the  miracle  will  not  renew  itself  and  the  sequel  of 
his  work  will  consist  of  nothing  more  than  a  suc- 
cession of  outlines  and  sketches,  more  and  more 
dim,  and  less  and  less  moving. 

"  The  man  who  has  the  gift  of  transforming 
himself  may  be  lacking  in  style,  may  hurry  and 
write  like  a  madman.  There  will  still  be  in  his 
work  a  special  power  which  will  cause  it  to  live 
and  last,  whilst  others  which  are  more  carefully 
wrought  and  irreproachable  shall  have  disappeared 
long  ago. 

"  Alongside  of  Balzac  let  us  take  the  greatest 
lyricist  of  the  century  as  an  example :  Victor 
Hugo  —  the  greatest  lyricist,  that  is  to  say  the 
biggest  me,  the  most  encroaching  personality. 
What  do  we  see  in  his  romances  and  his  dramas? 
Beings  without  measure  or  proportion,  formed  by 
the  creasings  and  unfoldings  of  the  me  proper 
to  Victor  Hugo,  a  me  in  a  thousand  manners, 
but  recognizable  beneath  its  borrowed  garments 
through  an  identical  speech,  through  his  meta- 
phors, his  unexpected  caesuras,  his    antitheses  — 


1 66  Alphonse  V etude t. 

in  a  word,  through  the  whole  romantic  baggage. 
They  are  wonderful  poems,  but  they  do  not  give 
us  the  illusion  of  life;  Javart  is  the  sureness  of 
Victor  Hugo;  Sister  SimpHce  is  his  feeling  for 
beauty,  or  the  generosity  of  Hugo ;  Jean  Valjean 
is  the  whole  of  Hugo,  his  revolt,  his  magnificence 
and  his  egotism,  all  in  one.  .  .  .  This  personality 
of  his  remains  so  overflowing  and  incapable  of 
transformation,  that  in  that  marvellous  book  of 
observation,  Chose  Vue,  it  impresses  its  mark  upon 
all  the  events  of  the  time,  reserves  for  itself  all  the 
wise  words  and  correct  conclusions,  all  the  bold 
solutions  of  questions,  and  appropriates  to  itself 
history  with  a  gravity  and  a  sureness  which 
approach  the  comic." 

I  remember  how  one  day,  at  the  close  of  one  of 
our  conversations,  I  asked  him  whence  came  that 
power  he  had,  that  aptitude  to  slip  into  the  heart 
of  another  person  and  clothe  himself  with  the 
other's  manner.     He  answered  : 

"  You  know  I  am  not  a  metaphysician,  but 
across  all  the  systems  there  appeared  to  me  the 
idea  that  philosophy,  which  is  wise  in  the  problems 
of  reason  and  intelligence,  is  only  rudimentary  for 
that  which  relates  to  feeling.  The  latter  has  re- 
mained mysterious,  unexplored  and  full  of  abysses. 
All  the  attempts  of  Descartes  and  Spinoza  were 
nothing  more  than  bringing  logical  and  cold  solu- 
tions to  problems  of  passion  and  attempting  to  fit 
feelin»g  to  reason. 

"  All  I  have  is  my  own  experience  supported  by 
a   few   efforts   of  the    imagination.     But   the  ex- 


North  and  South,  167 

perience  of  a  single  person  is  that  of  all  the  world, 
since  we  form  individuals  by  narrow  and  special 
combinations  of  general  faculties. 

"  Well,  human  sensibility  seems  to  me  like  a 
sort  of  electrical  circuit,  each  element  of  which 
would  be  an  abbreviated  image  of  the  whole.  In- 
dividual pity,  individual  pain,  individual  charity, 
are  merely  the  reflections  of  pain,  pity  and  charity 
in  the  universal  sense.  Moreover  in  this  domain 
everything  is  a  matter  of  contagion  and  of  quick 
and  wonderful  transmission ;  it  happens  not  seldom 
that  a  whole  people  is  filled  with  an  overwhelming 
feeling  for  some  idea  of  justice,  and  that  to  the 
very  death,  but  an  idea  which  up  to  that  time  had 
left  them  quite  indififerent. 

"  We  writers  of  romances  ought  to  do  everything 
to  render  this  communion  of  feeling  more  frequent. 
Our  ideal  task  is  to  excite  generous  movements, 
keep  souls  in  a  state  of  metamorphosis  in  conni- 
vance with  other  souls. 

"  Certain  duties  and  rules  derive  from  this.  We 
are  culpable  if  we  propagate  evil  or  ugliness, 
whether  from  thoughtlessness  or  lucre.  We  are 
culpable  if  we  do  not  console,  but  on  the  contrary 
render  people  desperate  and  augment  the  sufferings 
or  vileness  of  the  human  race." 

Then  he  came  back  to  the  question  of  race: 
"  If  there  ever  was  a  people  in  whom  this  gift  of 
metamorphosis  exists,  this  transmission  of  feelings, 
it  is  certainly  the  people  of  the  South.  Among  us 
some  one  in  a  group  may  be  telling  of  a  frightful 
accident.     All  the  faces   express   disgust.     They 


1 68  Alphonse  Daudet. 

follow  the  words  of  the  speaker  with  a  liveliness 
which  is  in  marked  contrast  with  the  close-shut 
mysterious  attitude  of  a  Northern  crowd.  Among 
the  latter,  feelings  which  are  better  concealed  go 
on  accumulating  and  under  the  least  pretext  may 
suddenly  explode. 

"  I  myself,"  continued  he,  "  can  recollect  whilst 
still  very  small  to  have  passed  a  part  of  the  night 
in  recalling  the  sorrowful  intonation  my  father 
used  when  he  heard  of  the  death  of  his  eldest  son. 
I  adored  that  elder  brother,  but  the  correctness  and 
power  of  the  accent  and  of  the  gesture  which  ac- 
companied the  anguished,  harsh  voice,  took  pos- 
session of  my  sensitive  organism,  which  as  you 
see  was  already  prepared  for  the  miracle  of  the 
transformation. 

"  For  it  is  a  real  miracle,  which  surpasses  spirit- 
ualism and  the  turning  tables.  Balzac  puts  on  the 
scene  a  character  in  whom  he  supposes  certain 
vices  exist,  then  he  finds  for  every  circumstance 
certain  typical  phrases  such  as :  '  Then  I  shall 
take  the  little  girl  with  me !  '  the  exclamation  of 
Baron  Hulot,  which  one  feels  could  not  have  failed 
to  have  been  said.  Those  are  not  recollections. 
That  sort  of  thing  happens  in  every  country.  It  is 
the  supreme  gift  of  the  romance  writer. 

"  Well,  I  have  heard  peasants  among  us,  story- 
tellers, who  possess  that  gift  to  the  very  highest 
degree  and  along  with  it  a  true  genius  for  mimicry- 
Nature  had  been  prodigal  to  them  just  as  it  was 
with  my  dear  Baptiste  Bonnet.  Not  only  did 
they  have  the  emotion  itself  and  the   power    to 


North  and  South.  169 

excite,  but  they  had  style  besides,  a  power  half 
traditional  and  half  spontaneous  over  form,  which 
Blad^  has  very  accurately  pointed  out  in  his  mag- 
nificent collection  Contes  de  Gascogne  and  which 
causes  little  by  little  their  laical  and  perfunctory 
education  to  disappear. 

"  The  sun,  transformed  into  heat  and  movement, 
furious  and  irresistible,  glides  into  the  veins  of  the 
Southerners.  Though  it  may  intoxicate  and  turn 
their  heads,  it  never  attacks  their  intelligence, 
which  on  the  contrary  it  renders  stronger,  deeper 
and  more  lucid.  Since  the  sun  permits  them  to 
meet  each  other  on  the  public  square  or  during 
their  labors  in  the  fields  at  every  season  of  the 
year,  it  favors  the  humanitarian  side,  the  social 
connections  which  flow  from  love  to  municipal 
activity,  the  results  of  which  are  strong  and  last- 
ing races.  The  sun  increases  the  power  of  the 
gesture  when  it  stands  out  against  a  bright  back- 
ground. It  gives  resonance  to  the  voice.  It 
seems  as  if  the  harmony  of  the  sun,  the  rhythmical 
force  of  its  rays,  impregnate  people  with  elo- 
quence and  the  power  of  the  word.  And  just  as 
it  stops  out  colors  and  shades  of  color,  just  as  it 
reduces  everything  to  the  same  plane,  so  it  makes 
illusions  easy. 

"  It  pulls  the  individual  together  in  the  present 
and  simplifies  for  him  a  future  which  is  golden  and 
warm  like  it,  and  filled  like  it  with  lively  and  joy- 
ous sensations.  It  gushes  forth  feelings  before 
our  astonished  consciousness  in  jets  and  sheets  and 
cascades ;   it  deploys  them  magnificently,  increases 


170  Alphonse  Daudet, 

their  rapidity  ten-fold  and  favors  that  gentle  frenzy 
of  the  mind  in  which  bashfulness  and  heroism, 
generosity  and  fear,  boldness  and  timidity  mix 
together  in  a  combination  of  truth  which  is  often 
ironical. 

"This  crowd  of  qualities  is  the  crowd  of  the 
human  being  itself."  (Here  my  father  would  take 
on  a  special  expression  and  weigh  his  words  as  he 
did  when  his  conversation  approached  some  chief 
point.)  "  Of  a  certainty  every  human  being  feels 
that  crowd  of  sensations  living  and  noisy  within 
his  own  breast,  in  his  hours  of  excitement,  stupe- 
fied by  the  multitude  of  them  rising  in  the 
dark  shadows  of  his  consciousness ;  it  seems  to 
him  that  the  forgotten  hordes  of  his  ancestors  are 
rising  there.  A  universal  shudder  and  whisper 
run  through  him.  Then  some  tendency  defines 
itself  and  becomes  the  leader  of  the  crowd.  Deci- 
sion is  the  action  of  this  leader.  Hesitation  is  a 
debate  between  those  hereditary  antagonisms. 

"Well,  among  the  Southerners  tiie  crowd  of  the 
hiiinan  being  makes  its  appearance  in  a  lightning 
flash  as  swift  and  burning  as  a  pain.  The  sudden 
loosing  of  the  cog  of  decision  causes  that  disorder 
of  the  face  and  gesture,  that  ardor  in  love,  which 
seem  so  funny  if  one  does  not  belong  to  that  exag- 
gerating race." 

My  father  brought  together  with  great  care  — 
they  will  be  found  in  his  notes  —  all  kinds  of  pro- 
verbs of  the  South,  those  in  especial  which  relate 
to  the  family  and  the  position  of  woman  in  the 
household.     He  searched  among  his  recollections 


North  and  South.  171 

for  the  faded  outlines  of  peculiar  relatives,  such  as 
formerly  grew  up  in  the  provinces  when  an  over- 
centralization  had  not  reduced  all  characters  and 
brought  them  down  to  a  single  commonplace  type. 

Whenever  he  was  in  Provence  he  made  every 
peasant  he  met  converse,  listening  with  delight  to 
their  picturesque  and  wild  explanations  mixed  with 
sententious  remarks,  such  as  revealed  the  Roman 
churl :  "  At  every  turn  of  the  road  I  discover 
something  of  my  youth.  Is  it  necessary  to  accept 
Dante's  word?  Is  it  really  a  pain,  or  is  it  not  a 
solace  to  recall  hours  of  happiness  when  one  feels 
unhappiness  and  regret?" 

As  he  has  once  written,  he  believed  that  "  In 
France  everybody  has  a  bit  of  Tarascon  about 
him."  In  another  form  he  said  that  "  A  French- 
man who  gets  excited  becomes  easily  a  Provencal." 
So  it  was  that  during  the  war  of  1870  he  had  been 
able  to  note  the  propagation  of  false  news,  an  ex- 
cessive enthusiasm  in  connection  with  exaggera- 
tions at  the  start,  and  a  prostration  during  the 
darkest  hours  in  due  proportion  — those  disorderly 
ups  and  downs  which  form  the  bad  side  of  the 
"  race  of  the  sun." 

He  stated  also  that  '*  the  Frenchman  has  a 
Keltic  father  and  a  Latin  mother"  and  that  "the 
play  of  those  two  influences  determine  the  somer- 
saults in  our  history." 

Whilst  still  young  he  had  seen  in  his  native  town 
the  last  open  battles  between  Protestants  and  Cath- 
olics: "  I  know  a  Huguenot  at  sight,  particularly 
the  Southern  species,  from  his  accent,  gestures, 


172  Alphonse  Daudet. 

look  and  method  of  reasoning.  He  forms  a  being 
apart,  much  more  reserved,  cool  and  master  of 
himself  than  the  Catholic.  There  are  two  portals 
for  temperaments  of  this  kind,  just  as  there  are 
two  gates  to  cemeteries  in  our  country  —  schismatic 
and  orthodox  portals." 

As  I  have  already  shown,  it  cannot  be  doubted 
that  he  himself  belonged  to  the  Catholic  pole. 
He  had  that  pity,  that  complete  pity  which  the 
moment  it  finds  its  object  cares  nothing  more  for 
dialectics.  He  had  a  taste  for  risk  and  adventure. 
In  talking  this  way  I  do  not  wish  to  say  that  Prot- 
estants are  lacking  in  courage  either;  on  the  con- 
trary, I  believe  they  have  a  very  living  moral 
energy  where  it  affects  their  convictions  and  their 
immediate  sense  of  justice.  But  they  weigh  their 
actions  and  their  words.  My  father  was  sponta- 
neous. When  it  came  to  the  domain  of  action 
he  put  calculation  aside ;  his  natural  generosity 
placed  him  by  instinct  in  the  heroic  path.  Fin- 
ally, as  I  have  often  remarked,  there  is  among  the 
Protestants  an  extreme  difficulty  of  making  a  de- 
cision, a  kind  of  paralysis  of  scrupulousness.  My 
father  accepted  responsibilities  quietly,  but  imme- 
diately, in  a  few  moments,  he  took  his  position. 

The  creases  which  religion  leaves  in  characters 
were  often  the  subject  of  our  conversations.  He 
understood  wonderfully  the  features  which  faith 
impresses  on  souls.  The  history  of  the  Reforma- 
tion had  excited  him,  in  so  far  as  it  involved  the 
opposition  in  the  North  to  the  expansion  of  the 
Renaissance,  which  was  entirely  Southern: 


North  and  South,  173 

"  Oh.  yes,  I  understand  how,  beneath  a  low  sky 
and  among  the  mists,  those  voluptuous  Popes  who, 
according  to  that  admirable  joke  of  one  of  them, 
could  not  imagine  how  men  could  live  '  without  the 
carnal  affections '  —  those  Popes  bedizened  with 
ribbons  and  lace,  surrounded  by  mistresses  and 
painters  and  music,  must  have  revolted  extremely 
rigorous  souls.  That  is  it,  there  speaks  the  influ- 
ence of  climate.  .  .  .  To  the  present  day  the 
look  of  a  Protestant  village  in  our  rural  parts 
differs  entirely  from  that  of  a  Catholic  village. 
But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Catholicism  has 
on  its  side  the  idea  of  pardon  and  sacrifice,  and 
the  splendid  dogma  of  substitution  and  ransom 
which  people  have  so  often  deformed  and  badly 
interpreted." 

The  Gospels  made  the  tears  come  into  his  eyes. 
In  the  practice  of  religion  he  loved  the  pomp  and 
ceremony,  he  loved  processions  and  the  charming 
whiteness  of  the  girls  going  to  communion,  and 
above  all  things  the  bell,  whose  solemn  voice  filled 
him  with  melancholy.  Never  did  an  impious  word 
ever  slip  from  his  mouth.  Was  he  entirely  unbe- 
lieving and  skeptical?  Those  are  secrets  which 
the  conscience  holds  to  the  very  last.  He  was 
much  pleased  because  my  mother  used  to  go  and 
pray  at  the  graves  of  his  relations.  He  showed  a 
desire  to  see  us  baptized  and  go  to  communion. 
My  civil  marriage  was  very  distasteful  to  him.  He 
was  the  son  of  a  devout  mother.  In  his  extreme 
youth  he  himself  had  shown  an  almost  excessive 
piety.     Through   his  feeling  for   pain  and  owing 


1/4  Alphonse  Daudet. 

to  the  rude  trials  of  his  life,  he  remained  close  to 
that  religion  which  has  offered  the  most  sublime 
ejaculations,  the  most  profound  restfulness  to  the 
soul,  and  the  most  tragic  and  subtle  renunciations. 
I  have  heard  him  talk  of  Christ  with  an  energy 
and  an  unction  which  any  preacher  might  have 
envied,  showing  something  narrow  and  familiar  and 
as  it  were  fragrant  and  balmy,  which  suited  well 
the  latitude  of  Palestine,  but  which  he  got  from 
his  own  Provence.  Often  his  eye  lit  up  at  some 
word  of  mystery  or  of  miracle  ;  he  expressed  him- 
self concerning  faith  and  periods  of  dryness  in 
faith  and  the  torments  of  believers  with  an  elo- 
quence which  sprang  from  the  intimate  sources  of 
religious  feeling.  .  .  .  And  nevertheless  he  vener- 
ated Montaigne  even  more  than  Pascal ;  neverthe- 
less when  one  pushed  him  hard  concerning  these 
problems,  his  replies  showed  acute  skepticism  or 
there  were  long  silences  of  doubt. 

To  sum  up,  I  believe  that  that  impress  of  the 
race  which  was  so  strong  in  him  had  marked  him 
with  the  moral  forms  of  the  Catholic  faith.  I  be- 
lieve that  he  would  have  desired  to  hold  the  faith 
and  that  absolute  materialism  and  atheism  were 
odious  to  him,  but  his  powerful  and  yet  gentle 
love  of  life  for  life's  sake,  of  justice  without  recom- 
pense and  of  pity  which  does  not  see  its  own 
good,  took  in  him  the  place  of  narrow  concep- 
tions of  a  future  and  better  organized  world. 

In  most  cases  and  especially  when  there  were 
more  than  two  present  he  avoided  such  conversa- 
tions "  to  which  each  one  brings  nothing  but  vague 


North  and  South.  175 

words  which  have  been  heard  a  hundred  times 
before."  I  remember  that  he  was  even  astonished 
that  the  grandest  subjects  known  to  humanity 
should  be  precisely  those  on  which  the  greatest 
number  of  follies  are  accumulated,  as  if  the  spirit 
became  numb  at  a  certain  level  and  lost  its  clear 
view  and  fruitful  ideas. 

One  summer  afternoon  as  we  were  walking  he 
said  to  me :  "  When  nature  seems  to  us  intention- 
ally bad  and  homicidal,  it  presents  us  indeed  with 
a  painful  alternative,  but  what  is  much  more  sinis- 
ter is  nature's  indifference  when  it  appears  to  be 
separated  from  us  by  an  impassable  gulf 

"  So  the  way  I  explain  it  is,  that  believers  close 
their  eyes  to  this  world,  stop  their  ears  and  shut 
themselves  up  in  the  strange  palaces  of  the  soul. 
Outside  they  would  find  nothing  but  perils,  deserts 
and  temptation.  As  for  me,  in  whose  blood  doubt 
and  the  reminiscences  of  belief  are  at  war,  I  have 
a  two-fold  view  of  that  which  lies  about  me, 
of  this  garden  for  instance,  of  the  sky  and  the 
waters.  Now  all  this  vibrates  and  it  affects  me, 
it  traverses  and  enthuses  me;  again,  I  have  re- 
mained cold  and  unapproachable,  and  familiar 
places  have  seemed  to  me  unknown  abodes  which 
are  almost  hostile.  ...  Is  it  not  perhaps  pain 
which  takes  the  color  out  of  my  little  domain?  " 

My  father,  at  one  and  the  same  time  nomadic 
in  temperament,  a  lover  of  change  and  a  follower 
of  tradition,  respectful  toward  religion,  scrupulous 
and  a  mocker,  detesting  officialdom,  cliques,  the. 
lying  honors  of  society  and  every  kind  of  conven- 


176  Alphonse  Daudet. 

tion,  seemed  to  me  a  finished  type,  but  a  purified 
one,  of  the  man  of  the  South. 

Purified  —  because  it  is  when  he  is  in  action  that 
the  Southerner  degenerates.  My  father  did  not 
ignore  this  at  all  and  judged  very  severely  certain 
celebrated  politicians,  his  compatriots  : 

"  A  morality  as  loose  as  one's  belt.  Streams  of 
faults,  talk  as  facile  as  their  impulse  and  their 
promises,  yes,  as  their  mendacity.  When  it  comes 
to  those  frightful  politics,  our  good  qualities  change 
very  quickly  for  the  worse :  enthusiasm  becomes 
hypocrisy,  loquacity  and  charlatanry;  gentle  skep- 
ticism becomes  scoundrelism ;  love  of  things  that 
shine  becomes  rage  for  money  and  luxury  at  any 
price;  sociability  and  the  desire  to  please  turn 
to  cowardice,  feebleness  and  turn-coatism.  Alas, 
for  the  lofty  comedies  !  What  breasts  smitten  by 
the  hand,  what  low,  moved  voices,  hoarse  but 
captivating,  what  easy  tears  are  theirs,  what  ad- 
jurations and  calls  upon  patriotism  and  the  lofty 
sentiments !  You  remember  the  famous  phrase 
by  Mirabeau:  'And  we  shall  not  leave  except 
through  the  power  of  bayonets ;  '  well,  a  legend 
which  may  be  true  adds  this  growling,  oblique 
continuation,  given  in  a  murmur  aside  with  his 
eye  on  the  wink:  '  And  if  they  do  come,  we  shall 
skedaddle  !  '  " 

The  love  of  solitude  and  reflection  which  had 
gone  on  developing  itself  in  Alphonse  Daudet  is 
rarely  a  virtue  of  the  Southern  people :  "  Every- 
thing outside  "  is  a  motto  for  that  race  of  "  brown 
crickets,"  so  changeable  and  noisy.     That  phrase 


Noj^tk  and  South.  177 

of  Roumestan's :  "When  I  am  not  talking  I  can- 
not think  "  is  a  profound  truth. 

I  may  remark  in  this  connection  how  many 
formulas,  metaphors,  phrases  and  definitions  in- 
vented and  made  popular  by  my  father  have  made 
quick  fortunes  and  are  currently  employed  by 
many  people  who  ignore  their  origin.  That  is 
because  those  formulas  and  definitions  have  "  the 
living  virtue  "  in  them,  that  mysterious  attraction 
arising  from  picturesqueness  and  ease  of  applica- 
tion, which  continue  them  as  they  are,  but  some- 
times deform  their  original  sense. 

However  slightly  affected  by  pride  he  may  have 
been  because  of  his  talents  and  success,  still  he  was 
delighted  with  these  survivals.  Somewhere  he  tells 
how  his  heart  swelled  in  his  breast  with  pride  when 
he  heard  people  say:  "That  man  is  a  Delobelle, 
or  a  d'Argenton,  or  a  Roumestan,  or  a  Tartarin." 

Is  it  not  one  of  the  glories  of  men  of  letters  to 
make  species  in  this  way  out  of  characters  and 
types  of  men  who,  before  they  wrote,  were  lost  in 
the  indistinct  crowd  of  human  beings  ?  "  It  seems," 
said  I  to  him,  "  that  one  of  the  purposes  of  art 
consists  in  differentiating  the  vital  elements,  char- 
acters, landscapes  and  even  objects,  and  rendering 
beauty  in  its  smallest  aspects  visible  and  present." 

He  answered:  "That  reflection  springs  from 
the  letters  which  you  wrote  to  me  from  Holland 
with  regard  to  the  great  realistic  painters :  Rem- 
brandt, Frans  Hals  and  van  der  Meer.  I  have 
al\va\-s  thought  in  that  way,  A  pencil  of  light 
upon  a  face,  a  feeling  which  touches  one,  a  ges- 


178  Alp  house  Daudet, 

ture,  a  look,  have  each  its  own  proper  value, 
immediate  and  immortal,  which  separates  it  from 
all  the  luminous  rays,  feelings,  gestures  and  looks 
which  are  possible.  We  make  everything  into  an 
individual  and  we  break  up  classes  in  nature." 

The  same  kind  of  work  which  he  undertook 
with  regard  to  the  Southerners  he  desired  that 
each  author  should  do  for  the  men  of  his  own 
race.  "  That  is  the  way  in  which  one  becomes 
representative.  Such  special  studies,  far  from 
hurting  general  views,  are  useful  to  them  and  feed 
them  with  examples." 

In  the  little  note-books  a  series  of  biographical 
and  historical  remarks  of  the  highest  interest  may 
be  read,  from  Mirabeau  to  Bonaparte  and  Thiers 
and  Guizot  and  Gambetta,  all  of  which  tend  to 
find  the  origins  of  their  acts  and  words  beneath 
that  heap  of  hypocritical  conventions  and  lies 
which  the  contact  of  other  ambitions  occasions  in 
men  of  politics,  as  well  as  their  natural  love  of 
combat  and  desire  to  exert  their  influence. 

According  to  Alphonse  Daudet  the  novel  is  a 
prop  to  history.  In  some  places  it  may  even 
enlighten  and  do  it  justice.  Among  the  works 
of  contemporaries  there  is  a  good  example  in  sup- 
port of  this  theory  in  Gustave  Gefifroy's  Blanqiii. 
Whilst  studying  a  great  character  this  conscien- 
tious artist,  this  "  poet  of  reality  "  which  Gefifroy 
is,  has  explained  modern  processes  of  investiga- 
tion and  description.  The  result  is  a  rare  and 
remarkable  work  which  doubtless  will  serve  as  type 
and  model  to  many  other  essays  in  the  same  line. 


North  and  South.  179 

Let  no  one  imagine,  however,  that  my  father 
pushed  this  taste  for  analysis  from  the  point  of 
view  of  race  to  the  limits  of  a  fad.  His  "Latin 
good  sense,"  his  love  of  proportion  preserved 
him  from  such  an  excess.  He  venerated  Michelet; 
he  read  and  reread  him ;  he  used  new  terms  of 
laudation  for  the  sublime  author  of  L Histoire  de 
France —  de  la  Femine  —  de  la  Mer —  de  la  Bible 
—  de  VHumanite'.  He  admired  Taine,  whilst  at 
the  same  time  on  his  guard  against  that  writer's 
strained  method  of  systematizing  and  whilst  find- 
ing him  too  hard  on  heroes  and  enthusiasts. 

Lover  of  equilibrium  and  harmony  in  the  do- 
main of  thought  as  he  was,  he  understood  and 
excused  fanaticism  in  the  domain  of  action.  And 
I  am  ready  to  believe  that  he  preferred  Taine's 
Littemture  Anglaise  to  the  Origines  de  la  Fra^ice 
Cojttemporaine. 

This  love  of  history  sometimes  brought  out 
dialogues  of  the  sort  that  follows : 

/.  —  How  is  it  that  you  have  never  yet  written  a 
grand  study  on  one  of  your  heroes,  or  on  some 
period  of  the  wars  of  religion  in  your  country,  or 
some  episode  of  the  Renaissance  or  of  the  Refor- 
mation, which  I  see  you  studying  with  such  tre- 
mendous energy? 

He  (with  a  sigh). — The  man  of  letters  does  not 
march  in  the  direction  he  wishes.  A  subject 
carries  him  along  and  turns  him  away  from  his 
goal.  In  my  notes  you  will  find  a  Napoleon  as  a 
man  of  the  South,  which  our  dear  Frederic  Masson 
has  made  a  reality  and  more  than  a  reality,  also  a 


i8o  Alphonse  Daudet. 

Guerre  des  Albigeois  and  a  SoidHement  de  VAlg^rie, 
also  a  monograph  on  Raousset-Boulbon  and 
another  on  Rossel,  etc.  Subjects  of  that  sort 
exist  without  end  along  the  borders  of  history  and 
romance  writing.  I  wish  to  sound  them  and  treat 
them  in  accordance  with  the  documents  of  life. 

I.  —  Always  concerning  Southerners,  episodes  in 
the  combats  between  the  North  and  the  South? 

He.  —  Have  I  not  repeated  a  hundred  times  that 
all  one  man  can  add  as  contribution  to  truth  is 
infinitely  little  and  weak  ?  I  think  it  well  to  accept 
with  caution  a  great  many  singular  observations 
on  my  race,  its  virtues  and  vices.  A  man  cannot 
note  down  everything.  I  believe  in  the  future. 
Reality  possesses  an  incredible  force  which  is  dis- 
tinct from  the  force  of  truth. 

/.  —  Is  n't  that  just  the  same  thing? 

He.  —  By  no  means.  Truth  is  a  moral  judgment 
made  by  men  or  facts  upon  reality.  That  judgment 
may  be  obscure  and  weak  and  wreck  itself.  Truth 
has  a  susceptibility  far  more  delicate  than  any 
printed  paper  of  whatsoever  kind.  The  atmos- 
phere and  the  sunlight,  and  the  breath  and  every- 
thing causes  it  to  degenerate.  Reality  however 
exists  and  dwells  forever.  But  a  poet  is  neces- 
sary to  lend  to  reality  the  power  to  revive,  the 
power  of  propagation  and  duration.  Michelet  was 
a  "  visionary  of  the  real." 

"  Rarement  un  esprit  ose  etre  ce  qu'il  est."* 

That  line,  which  I  think  is  from  Boileau,  was  apt 
to  be   launched   suddenly  into  a  conversation   by 

^  "  And  seldom  dare  a  soul  be  reallv  what  it  is !  " 


North  and  South.  i8i 

way  of  an  encouragement  or  reproach.  Very 
often  he  explained  how  character  is  the  result  of 
a  moral  courage  which  causes  a  man  to  develop 
himself  after  his  own  proper  nature  and  bring 
into  relief  the  virtues  and  the  vices  which  come  to 
him  as  a  heritage. 

"  In  the  same  way,"  he  added,  "  there  is  an  inner 
timidity  which  prevents  the  individual  from  devel- 
opment and  stops  the  realization  of  his  own  type 
and  produces  that  quantity  of  worn  and  half- 
defaced  medals  devoid  of  interest  which  constitute 
the  mass  of  men. 

"  A  man  of  letters  who  is  thinking  of  the 
passions  has  necessarily  to  do  with  that  mass  and 
those  indistinct  outlines.  For  it  would  prove  a 
wearisome  convention  if  one  were  to  put  to  work 
characters  alone.  It  is  in  dealing  with  these  half- 
tones and  these  passages  in  chiaroscuro  that  our 
task  becomes  most  difficult.  '  A  hero  of  the  non- 
heroic,'  there  is  the  masterpiece  which  Flaubert 
has  realized  in  V Educatio7i  Sentimentale. 

"  Well,  a  man  of  a  different  race  or  a  different 
epoch  becomes  typical  for  that  very  reason. 
Roumestan  or  Tartarin  would  not  stand  out  from 
a  crowd  in  the  South.  It  is  Paris  that  puts  them 
in  relief.  In  the  same  way  we  still  visit  certain  old 
men  or  old  ladies  living  apart  from  society,  who 
have  preserved  unchanged  the  prejudices  and  ways 
of  looking  at  things,  the  generosities  and  warm 
sentiments  of  1848.  And  so  for  us  it  is  a  delight 
to  find  them,  as  it  is  a  joy  to  the  numismatist  to 
discover  a  finely  preserved  medal." 


1 8  2-  Alphonse  Daudet. 

In  some  romance  by  Jean  Paul  Richter  there  is 
a  character  who  has  passed  his  childhood  beneath 
the  earth,  and  the  day  when  on  stepping  out  upon 
the  surface  he  sees  the  sky  and  flowers  and  waters 
and  forests  he  thinks  he  has  entered  into  paradise. 

A  similar  impression  awaits  any  one  who,  having 
lived  in  the  North,  suddenly  discovers  the  South 
and  the  joy  of  sunlight.  Alphonse  Daudet  had 
preserved  piously  that  same  joy.  In  his  soul  it 
dominated  suffering  and  melancholy.  Whatever 
his  observation  of  the  world  brought  to  him  which 
was  cruel,  whatever  his  imagination  suggested  to 
him  that  was  harsh  and  vehement  and  terrible, 
was  softened  and  tempered  by  the  golden  warmth 
of  Provence,  made  serene  again  by  those  pure 
horizons  and  harmonized  in  tune  with  those  lines 
which  have  been  the  directors  of  human  wisdom 
since  the  time  of  classical  antiquity. 

That  marvellous  sense  for  proportion  is  the  safe- 
guard of  the  mind.  The  man  who  descends  into 
his  own  soul  and  does  not  hold  fast  to  a  love  of 
harmony,  plunges  very  soon  into  the  blackest 
shade.  He  becomes  unintelligible.  He  loses  all 
power  of  instruction.  This  conducting  clew  is  a 
very  little  matter.  It  would  have  rendered  such  a 
work  as  Ibsen's  Peer  Gyjit,  for  instance,  immortal. 
Of  a  certainty  a  multiplicity  of  interpretations  is  a 
sign  of  weakness.  The  poem  becomes  a  sort 
of  game  or  labyrinth  in  which  the  cleverness  of 
the  reader  exercises  itself.  What  brief  mental 
excitement  it  occasions  is  not  worth  one  clear 
recollection. 


North  and  South.  183 

On  that  point  my  father  was  quite  tranquil. 
According  to  him,  despite  some  rare  exceptions, 
French  thought  has  remained  in  love  with  all  that 
is  limpid  and  true  and  faithful  to  its  origins.  He 
admired  certain  pieces  by  Ibsen,  but  not  all.  For 
some  there  are,  the  symbolism  of  which  seemed 
to  him  infantile  and  false.  For  example  he  found 
once  more  in  Ibsen's  northern  sarcasm  about  the 
wild  duck  the  "  India-rubber  laugh,  the  laugh  of 
Voltaire  congealed  by  Pomeranian  sleet."  He 
had  a  warm  admiration  for  Tolstoif,  the  Tolstoif  one 
finds  in  War  and  Peace,  Anna  Karettina,  in 
the  Souvenirs  de  Sebastopol  and  in  the  Cos- 
sacks. The  Kreutzer  Sonata  was  revolting  to 
him  in  certain  places.  But  the  neo-mysticism  of 
this  author  and  his  last  evangelical  works  did  not 
interest  him  at  all. 

"  Tolstoi","  said  he,  "  has  enjoyed  in  his  youth 
everything  that  there  is  in  life  which  is  exquisite, 
luxurious  and  brilliant.  He  has  loved  the  chase, 
masquerades,  races  in  sleighs,  pretty  women, 
friends  and  the  arts.  But  now  he  would  like  to 
forbid  that  others  should  enjoy  pleasures  which 
his  old  age  prevents  him  from  repeating.  In  a 
conversion  effected  on  a  man  of  seventy  I  shall 
always  be  on  my  guard  against  regrets  and  that 
envy — oh,  very  distant,  underhand  and  indirect, 
but  tenacious  —  which  can  be  read  between  the 
wrinkles," 

The  reading  of  Crime  and  Punishment  had  been 
for  him  a  crisis  of  his  mind.  That  book  had 
prevented    him    from   writing   a   work   which    he 


184  Alpho7ise  Daudet. 

had  projected  on  Lebiez  and  Barr6,  and  the  action 
of  badly  understood  Darwinian  theories  on  the 
youthful  poor.  That  deviation  from  scientific 
formulas,  the  continuation  of  theories  into  practice 
disquieted  him,  and  we  owe  to  that  disquiet  his 
books:  La  Luite  pour  la  Vie,  La  Petite  Paroisse 
and  Le  Soiitien  de  Famille.  To  return  to  Dos- 
tojevski,  he  did  not  esteem  the  less  Frhes  Kara- 
■mazov  and  Maison  des  Morts ;  but  he  preferred 
the  harmonious  beauty  of  Anna  Karenina  and  the 
sumptuous  sonorousness  of  Guerre  et  Paix  to  the 
rousing  fanaticism  and  actual  hallucinations  of 
the  Russian  Dickens. 

So  the  reader  may  see  that  his  love  for  the 
South  did  not  cause  him  to  disdain  northern 
literature.  As  to  the  climate  itself,  that  is  another 
matter,  and  very  often  I  would  joke  with  him  upon 
the  contradiction  which  existed  between  his  hor- 
ror for  fogs  and  frosts  and  his  taste  for  Arctic 
expeditions. 


As  a  Man  of  Family.  185 


V. 

AS  A   MAN   OF  FAMILY. 

Marcel  Schwob,  the  author  of  Roi  au  Masque 
d'Or  and  of  Livre  de  Monelle  and  other  strik- 
ing works,  insists  with  very  great  justice  at  the 
beginning  of  his  admirable  work  Vies  Imagi- 
naires,  that  when  it  comes  to  the  biography  of 
great  persons,  family  details  are  of  the  highest 
importance.  Very  often  a  preference  or  custom 
or  some  habit  of  the  person  will  reveal  more  to 
the  reader  than  a  long  theory,  or  a  whole  body  of 
dogmas.  Whatever  is  individual  and  specific  in  a 
person  can  often  be  defined  with  greater  exactness 
by  means  of  one  of  those  remarks  which  the 
academical  spirit  is  always  ready  to  look  upon  as 
something  that  may  be  ignored. 

That  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  solemn  eulogies 
and  discourses  beside  the  grave  almost  always 
reduce  themselves  to  the  same  theme,  colorless 
and  ecstatic,  in  which  according  to  a  ritual  and  a 
formula,  virtues  without  saliency  and  monotonous 
circumstances  are  raised  to  the  seventh  heaven. 

In  his  dress  Alphonse  Daudet  showed  an  exem- 
plary modesty.  It  was  not  always  so  with  him. 
At  the  first  representation  of  Hcfiriette  Mare'- 
c/ial  a   young   man  with  long,  dark  hair,  whose 


1 86  Alphonse  Daudet. 

frantic  applause  caused  a  shimmering  silver  waist- 
coat to  scintillate  was  noticed  among  the  enthusi- 
astic defenders  of  the  play.  The  future  Mme. 
Alphonse  Daudet,  then  Mdlle.  Allard,  was 
present  on  that  memorable  first  night:  "Young 
girls  can  be  taken;  there  will  be  such  a  row  that 
they  can't  hear  anything,"  those  were  the  very 
words  used  by  the  friend  who  brought  the  tickets 
of  invitation.  During  the  latter  years  when  he 
dined  in  town  with  his  friends,  or  at  his  own  house 
on  Thursdays,  my  father  wore  a  jacket  of  black 
velvet.  He  himself  speaks  in  some  part  of  his 
works  of  objects  that  had  been  dear  to  the  de- 
ceased —  "  little  figures,  little  effigies,"  which  cause 
irresistible  tears  to  flow.  My  brother  and  I  used 
to  be  glad  to  give  him  our  arm  and  were  proud  of 
his  good  looks,  which  on  certain  days  were  really 
extraordinary.  But  with  what  reserve  did  he  not 
conceal  his  suffering !  It  contracted  his  features 
for  a  moment,  but  so  quickly  that  we  alone  could 
divine  it:  then  he  would  reassure  us  with  a  smile 
and  at  once  relate  some  jocose,  brave  story  which 
was  accompanied  by  a  little  quivering  of  the  eye 
that  put  us  in  touch  with  his  heroism. 

Very  often,  and  we  used  to  repeat  it  to  each 
other,  what  he  did  not  say,  what  he  gave  us  to 
understand  with  his  look,  was  just  as  penetrating 
and  prophetic  as  his  speech.  And  what  kindliness  ! 
^'  In  order  to  hold  well  what  one  has  in  hand, 
always  leave  the  cord  a  little  loose.  If  children 
have  souls  which  are  well-fashioned  to  start  with, 
such  tenderness  as  one  shows  them  will  never  do 


As  a  Man  of  Family.  187 

them  hurt.  It  will  bolster  them  up  later  during 
their  hours  of  wretchedness.  There  is  always  that 
much  captured  from  our  foe  — life  !  " 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  and  I  say  this  for  those  who 
have  not  not  known  him,  he  was  not  at  all  the 
hollow-cheeked  and  pallid  Christ  which  some 
people  have  represented  him  to  be.  When  his 
sufferings  gave  him  respite  he  gave  one  the 
impression  of  complete  health.  The  table  was 
decked  with  flowers  and  shining  glass.  There 
were  the  most  diverse  kinds  of  comrades :  Dru- 
mont,  de  Banville,  Hebrard,  Gambetta,  Leconte 
de  Lisle,  Zola,  Rochefort  and  how  many  others ! 
At  the  very  soup  my  father  had  already  put  every- 
body at  ease,  delighting  his  guests  with  a  brief 
and  brilliant  story,  one  of  those  winged  improvisa- 
tions which  were  habitual  with  him,  or  else  by 
some  observation  irresistible  in  its  fun.  Then 
with  wonderful  cleverness  he  would  launch  the 
conversation  in  some  direction  favorable  to  the 
lively  spirit  of  one  or  other  of  those  present,  he 
would  direct,  protect  and  breathe  new  life  into  it, 
he  would  raise  its  quality  and  keep  it  human. 

Now  he  would  attack  the  whole  company  and 
fly  into  an  excitement,  when  the  sound  of  his 
voice,  so  v/arm  and  subtle,  so  ardent  and  engross- 
ing, together  with  his  brilliant  eyes  and  gestures 
made  a  most  extraordinary  picture  and  combina- 
tion. Again  he  would  yield  the  floor,  make  him- 
self scarce  and  hide  away,  in  order  to  allow  some 
champion  in  conversation  to  carry  off  an  easy 
triumph.     He   knows   the  value  of  opinions,  the 


1 88  Alp  house  Daudet. 

rush  of  dispute  and  the  intoxication  that  comes 
from  contradictions.  On  one  point  he  is  severe. 
He  holds  to  a  decent  tone  in  pleasantries  and 
woe  to  him  who  shall  permit  himself  some  risky 
allusion,  some  word  which  might  shock  feminine 
ears !  Then  his  looks  grow  black  and  his  voice 
changes ;  dexterously  and  swiftly  he  recalls  to  the 
mind  of  the  clumsy  fellow  what  the  forms  of 
politeness  are:  "  those  pleasing  frontiers,  standing 
on  which  one  may  say  everything  so  long  as  no 
disgraceful  image  appears,  nothing  that  would  soil 
or  degrade." 

Gifted  with  an  extreme  sharpness  of  hearing,  my 
father  heard  what  people  were  whispering  ten 
seats  away  from  him ;  he  often  took  a  hand  in  an 
"  apart "  when  he  was  not  expected,  and  nothing 
amused  him  more  than  to  put  to  the  rout  some 
slight  mystery,  a  beginning  of  a  flirtation  or  a  timid 
advance. 

But  it  would  not  do  to  be  the  dupe  of  so  much 
kindliness  and  take  this  sweetness  of  his  for  weak- 
ness and,  as  he  says  himself,  "  pull  the  chair  from 
under  him."  I  have  known  two  men  who  had  the 
finished  gift  of  repartee.  One  was  Alphonse 
Daudet,  the  other  was  our  dear  and  admired 
friend  Paul  Hervieu.  Such  is  the  craft  of  the 
fencer,  who  when  unexpectedly  attacked  avoids 
the  blade  of  his  antagonist  and  strikes  for  the 
breast  with  a  disconcerting  swiftness- 
There  was  the  same  sharp  look,  suddenly  black 
and  implacable.  There  was  the  same  choice  of 
unforgettable  phrases,  poisoned  and  barbed  words, 


As  a  Man  of  Family.  189 

which  flew  from  his  lips.  A  precious  gift  was  his, 
the  abuse  of  which  need  not  be  feared  in  men  of 
that  sort.  A  gift  which  has  taken  on  enduring 
form  in  works  hke  L Immortel  or  Peiiits  par  Eux- 
inemes,  a  gift  that  masters  and  keeps  in  sub- 
jection the  fools,  hateful  ones  and  cowards,  and 
one  which,  if  it  were  wider  spread,  would  improve 
the  health  of  society  by  renewing  the  air  of  rude 
worldly  assemblies  which  is  often  filled  with  it  as 
with  a  pest. 

"  Naturalness  "  that  was  the  present  which  my 
father  made  to  every  assembly  in  which  he  found 
himself.  He  delivered  people  from  the  thousand 
different  bonds  which  hypocritical  conventions 
fasten  on  them,  from  the  prejudices  and  folly  of 
snobs.  Though  a  revolutionist  and  foe  of  abuses, 
he  preserved  all  the  forms  of  politeness.  And 
while  it  appeared  soft  outside  his  satire  was  really 
a  terrible  dissolvent.  Very  often  grave,  reserved 
and  cold  men  to  whom  all  familiarity  is  repellent 
seemed  to  change  their  character  and  gave  them- 
selves up  to  the  author  as  if  delighted  to  throw 
aside  their  pose. 

At  dinner  on  a  certain  evening  an  elderly  lady, 
a  much  envied  woman  who  occupied  a  brilliant 
position,  one  whom  he  saw  for  the  very  first  time 
and  who  drank  nothing  but  water,  confided  to  him 
the  actual  disaster  in  her  life  with  a  candor  and 
simplicity  and  naivete  which  fairly  took  his  breath 
away.  Yet  such  confessions  were  by  no  means 
rare.  The  attraction  that  certain  people  have, 
which  causes  others  to  give  themselves  up  to  them 


igo  Alpho7ise  Daudet. 

and  consult  them  and  take  them  for  guides,  de- 
spite all  distances  and  social  fictions  —  that  attrac- 
tion is  and  ever  will  be  mysterious.  Oftener  than 
people  think  there  is  a  desire  to  strip  the  soul  nude, 
cast  off  the  robes  of  ceremony  and  pull  one's  wig 
out  of  curl. 

"  There  is,"  said  he,  "  in  life  a  critical  moment,  a 
vif  de  la  vie,  into  which  two  people,  who  did  not 
know  each  other  the  moment  before,  all  of  a  sudden 
cast  themselves  with  a  singular  lack  of  prudence 
and  with  that  thirst  for  truth  which  torments 
scrupulous  people  and  believers." 

As  to  good  food,  he  preferred  very  simple  and 
well-done  dishes ;  for  a  hatred  of  artificiality  may 
reach  to  the  most  different  kinds  of  feeling. 
Coarse,  dark  or  red  dishes  repulsed  him.  A 
regular  Provencal,  he  loved  olives,  well-done 
dishes  and  salads  —  all  the  salads.  We  hap- 
pened to  be  at  a  counter  in  I'Herault. 

"  Madam,  is  this  piece  of  cold  meat  disen- 
gaged?" 

"  Certainly  sir.  .  .  .  Are  you  taking  it  with 
you  ?  " 

"  Of  course  I  am  taking  it  away." 

"  And  the  pickled  peppers  with  it?" 

"  Of  course  !  " 

In  our  gastronomical  reminiscences  that  slice  of 
cold  veal  will  always  hold  a  famous  place. 

He  spiced  his  meals  with  various  discussions  of 
Southern  cookery,  designed  for  restless  and 
burncd-out  stomachs.  "  In  order  to  eat  well 
down  South,  you  ought  to  eat  with  a  Southerner. 


As  a  Man  of  Family.  191 

You  may  as  well  believe  me  that  Bonnet's  saqiiette 
contained  marvellous  titbits.  It  is  the  same  with 
eating  as  with  everything  else.  It  is  no  good 
except  with  national  surroundings.  Then  the 
golden  wine  of  our  vineyards  has  its  own  merit. 
And  the  game  larded  with  little  leaves  of  the  vine 
has  its  proper  value,  as  it  turns  and  bastes  before 
the  crackling  of  the  vine  wood  in  the  tavern. 

"  This  dish  is  a  landscape  in  itself!  "  Such  was 
his  greatest  compliment.  He  preferred  Burgundy 
to  Bordeaux.  "  One  vulgar  delight  is  drinking  the 
little  wine  of  the  people,  whatever  kind  it  may  be, 
the  ginguet  as  it  is  called,  so  long  as  it  bites  the 
tongue  and  is  drunk  along  with  a  hunch  of  pretty 
high  cheese,  a  '  horror '  as  ladies  will  exclaim 
when  one  brings  it  home  all  terrible  and  smelly." 

When  in  Paris  my  father's  day  was  divided  be- 
tween work,  visits  from  friends  and  an  occasional 
walk. 

As  early  as  eight  o'clock,  placed  at  his  own 
writing-table,  he  began  by  dictating  his  copious 
correspondence  to  his  secretary,  the  same  that  he 
had  had  for  thirty  years.  As  he  has  many  a  time 
related,  it  was  one  morning  in  1870  on  the  firing- 
line  that  Alphonse  Daudet  made  the  acquaintance 
of  Jules  Ebner,  who  was  quietly  reading  an  ode 
from  Horace  in  the  face  of  snow  and  foe.  Since 
that  time  the  two  men  have  never  left  each  other 
until  the  death  of  one  of  them,  the  "  master " 
namely,  for  whom  the  other  possessed  an  admira- 
tion and  devotion  the  like  of  which  I  have  never 
seen. 


192  Alphonse  Daudet 

For  thirty  years,  without  missing  a  single  day, 
notwithstanding  often  fatiguing  work  as  secretary 
in  the  editorial  office  of  a  great  newspaper,  Ebner 
has  sat  there  before  my  father  with  his  pen  in  his 
hand.  He  had  to  answer  comrades  and  editors 
and  translators  and  beggars,  and  sift  the  good 
from  what  was  useless  or  piteous,  or  mere 
knavery.  .  .  .  There 's  a  ring  at  the  bell.  ...  It 
is  necessary  to  stop.  .  .  .  My  father's  welcome  is 
always  pleasant;  his  kindly  air  is  in  no  sense  a 
mask,  for  according  to  the  visitor,  he  passes  from 
the  liveliest  tenderness  to  mere  ordinary  cordiality. 

Often  a  comrade  passing  through  our  quarter 
of  the  town  would  come  to  "warm  himself"  in  the 
presence  of  the  master,  demanding  advice  or 
counsel.  He  was  so  indulgent  to  young  men ! 
One  of  the  last  careers  to  open,  in  which  he  took 
an  interest,  was  that  of  Georges  Hugo,  whom  he 
loved  and  whose  new  and  precocious  talent  he  ad- 
mired. The  cry  of  revolt  in  the  latter's  Souvenirs 
d'un  Matclot  went  to  his  heart,  just  as  every 
vibrating  and  sincere  word  overcame  him.  For 
my  part  I  have  sometimes  written  violent  and  even 
bloodthirsty  pages,  but  he  never  imposed  the 
slightest  restriction  upon  me.  Besides,  he  knew 
that  anger  is  only  another  face  of  pity.  From  my 
earliest  age  he  counselled  me  to  use  moderation 
when  in  doubt  and  boldness  when  sure  of  my 
ground. 

I  was  hardly  ten  years  of  age  when  he  caused 
me  to  take  my  first  lessons  with  the  sword  and 
pistol  "  in  order  to  give  me  the  chance  to  be  as 


As  a  Man  of  Family.  193 

patient  as  possible,  but  when  the  right  moment 
comes  to  astonish  an  adversary."  Until  it  began 
to  fatigue  him  too  much,  fencing  was  his  chief 
exercise.  He  gave  himself  up  to  it  with  enthusi- 
asm, holding  the  floor  for  an  hour  at  a  time ;  in 
the  game  his  whole  nature  came  to  the  surface ;  a 
mixture  of  strength  and  delicacy,  a  prudent  method 
broken  by  sudden  fits  of  audacity  and  violence, 
made  him  a  very  difficult  adversary. 

He  has  written  some  excellent  notes  on  the 
game  of  sword  and  foil  and  on  the  revelation  of  a 
character  through  feints  as  well  as  on  irresistible 
rushes,  the  truth  of  which  will  surprise  professional 
swordsmen.  At  the  same  time  he  used  to  take 
long  walks  at  a  rapid  gait  through  Paris,  turning 
over  in  his  mind  projects  of  books  and  characters 
and  associating  the  outer  world  with  them  at  any 
moment: 

"The  moment  that  an  idea  excites  and  makes 
us  quiver,  at  that  moment  through  a  singular 
paradox  we  become  most  frightened  and  most  im- 
pressionable. The  state  of  half  consciousness  is 
the  treasure-house  of  accessories,  the  store-house 
of  the  romance-writer." 

When  his  declining  powers  no  longer  allowed 
him  to  take  his  long  walks,  as  often  as  not  he 
made  the  house  of  his  father-in-law  Jules  Allard, 
"  his  best  friend,"  the  goal  of  his  saunterings.  At 
the  time  my  grandparents  inhabited  a  handsome 
house  with  a  garden  at  the  top  of  Cherche  Midi 
Street;  a  description  often  recurs  in  the  little 
note-books.     There  are  reports  of  long   conversa- 

13 


194  Alphonse  Daudet. 

tions  held  by  my  grandfather,  who  was  a  connois- 
seur of  men  and  a  poet  as  well  as  a  republican 
belonging  to  the  great  epoch,  with  my  grand- 
mother Leonide  Allard,  a  woman  of  broad  and 
mystic  mind,  who  was  wont  to  defend  the  rights  of 
the  supernatural  against  the  railleries  of  realism. 

For  my  father  was  always  rebellious  against  the 
manifestations  of  the  world  beyond  and  held  to 
the  opinion  of  his  friend  Montaigne  concern- 
ing the  "  unknowable."  "  My  dear  Mama  !  "  that 
was  the  way  he  called  her,  "  I  have  remarked  that 
superstition  and  skepticism  form  an  equilibrium 
in  the  same  family,  just  as  virtue  and  vice  remain 
equal,  prodigality  and  avarice  —  and  in  general  all 
such  oppositions  in  character." 

Since  the  increase  of  his  malady,  he  went  out 
very  little  in  the  evening.  It  had  to  be  a  very 
exceptional  occasion  to  decide  him  to  break  the 
rule.  Nevertheless  he  loved  the  world  and  society ; 
the  presence  of  strangers  was  good  for  him  and 
took  him  away  from  his  suffering.  The  general 
rehearsal  of  Sappho  at  the  Opera  Comique  was 
one  of  his  very  last  pleasures.  He  took  the  very 
liveliest  interest  in  the  staging  of  his  pieces,  in  the 
performance  of  the  actors  and  in  such  a  "  prepara- 
tion "  as  dramatic  authors  understand,  a  prepara- 
tion which  is  one  of  the  pleasures  of  the  craft.  He 
generously  distributed  on  the  stage  that  mass  of 
observations  "  from  the  life "  which  he  never 
ceased  to  heap  up,  and  he  insisted  that  each  detail 
should  be  scrupulously  regulated  in  consonance 
with  the  actual. 


As  a  Man  of  Family.  195 

It  is  hard  to  imagine  greater  interest  than  that 
in  a  rehearsal  of  a  play  directed  by  Porel,  who 
has  the  very  genius  of  the  stage  and  a  limitless 
invention,  when  aided  by  my  father,  who  was  life 
itself  What  art,  what  care  is  necessary  to  reach 
the  point  of  illusion  !  How  difficult  it  is  to  cause 
a  character  to  move  and  to  fix  the  entrances  and 
exits ! 

At  the  beginning  of  winter  the  year  before, 
Massenet  had  come  to  the  house  to  rehearse  his 
opera  on  the  piano  for  the  benefit  of  his  chief  in- 
terpreter Emma  Calv6,  the  authors  of  the  libretto 
Henri  Cain  and  Bernede,  and  his  friend  Daudet. 
When  the  touching  overture  of  the  last  act  was 
reached,  that  long  lamentation  broken  by  sobs, 
my  father  was  not  able  to  withhold  his  tears.  What 
did  he  imagine,  what  did  he  perceive  through  the 
waves  of  those  sonorous  agonies?  He  left  us  to 
imagine,  but  we  shall  never  hear  that  piece  of 
music  again  without  trembling. 

Portraits  of  Alphonse  Daudet  are  numerous  and 
some  of  them  are  very  close  to  life.  But  what 
they  are  not  able  to  render  and  what  is  forever 
lost  is  that  voice  of  his  with  inflections  as  delicate 
and  numerous  as  the  sentiments  it  expressed.  De- 
void of  the  race  accent  but  not  of  melody,  it  was 
as  if  filled  with  sunshine  when  the  soul  was  gay, 
or  again  it  trembled  when  the  mood  was  melan- 
choly. That  voice  has  remained  so  completely  in 
my  ears  with  all  its  shades  of  sound,  that  when  I 
open  a  book  by  him  or  when  I  quote  some  of  his 
sentences,  I  seem  to  hear  him  talk.      Irony  was 


196  Alphonse  Daudet. 

revealed  by  a  brief  hesitation,  a  sort  of  stoppage 
in  the  midst  of  phrases  which  the  Hstener  himself 
sometimes  had  to  finish. 

His  laugh  was  frank  and  splendid,  full  of  an  irre- 
sistible contagion.  Some  slight  discontent,  such 
as  the  small  tiresome  facts  of  paternity,  used  to 
be  expressed  now  by  silence,  without  pouting  but 
very  embarrassing,  and  again  by  side  remarks, 
made  "  without  seeming  to  mean  it." 

"  Hello,  you  seem  to  be  going  out  a  great  deal 
this  week.  ...  It  seems  to  me,  that  work  is  n't 
getting  on  very  well.  ..."  and  other  innocent 
stratagems. 

"  If  people  attack  my  own,  I  turn  into  a  savage 
beast."  In  his  case  that  sentiment  was  not  exag- 
gerated. By  the  exercise  of  generosity,  kindness, 
gentleness  and  humanity,  he  overcame  his  own 
nature,  but  at  bottom  that  nature  was  violent  and 
ardent  in  the  extreme.  A  wound  given  to  his 
affections  was  provocative  of  anger  which  was  all 
the  more  dangerous  because  he  knew  how  to  con- 
trol himself  and  await  the  hour  for  punishment, 
which,  according  to  him,  could  not  fail  to  arrive  : 
"  Just  let  destiny  work  itself  out,"  he  said  to  me 
when  I  was  hot  to  avenge  an  affront,  "  she  will 
shoulder  the  burden  of  your  hatred."  But  in  such 
things  as  affected  himself  alone  he  was  always  in- 
capable of  rancor  :   "  Bah,  life  is  too  short !  " 

Nevertheless  I  ought  to  remark  that  he  very 
rarely  went  back  on  his  judgments  and  that 
people  were  not  apt  to  escape  from  his  scorn. 
Like  those  who  love  in  good  sooth,  in  friendship 


As  a  Man  of  Family,  197 

he  was  very  susceptible.  Treachery  struck  him  to 
the  heart.  And  when  he  thought  that  he  himself 
was  in  the  wrong  he  would  do  everything  in  order 
to  repair  his  fault  and  would  confess  it  without  a 
single  drawback. 

No  man  was  ever  less  hypocritical;  none  de- 
tested so  sincerely  a  lie:  "That  parasitical  plant 
which  grows  in  people's  looks,  voice,  gestures  and 
gait  .  .  .  which  one  has  so  much  trouble  in  com- 
pletely driving  out." 

So  far  as  belongs  to  the  comfortable  things  of 
life,  my  father  did  not  care  for  them  at  all ;  he  was 
attached  only  to  some  few  very  simple  things  and 
these  always  the  same,  his  pipes,  pen-stand,  his 
ink-pot,  little  souvenirs  we  gave  him  which  were 
strewed  about  his  table.  If  we  presented  him  with 
cigars  he  distributed  them  to  everybody  who 
came  in  during  the  day :  "  I  have  the  greatest  dif- 
ficulty in  the  world,"  he  used  to  say,  "  to  make 
myself  believe  that  anything  whatever  belongs  to 
me. 

Here  is  the  end  of  those  "  moral  "  souvenirs 
which  I  wanted  to  bring  together,  lest  along  with 
Alphonse  Daudetthe  atmosphere  of  his  charm  and 
tenderness  should  disappear  entirely.  And  now, 
having  come  to  the  end  of  my  task,  I  perceive  how 
difficult  it  has  been.  Some  will  reproach  me  for 
having  been  too  chary  of  "  stories."  I  did  that  on 
purpose,  believing  that  it  is  better  to  display  the 
heart  and  soul  of  a  man  like  my  father  than  to 
fritter  them  away  in  episodes  and  anecdotes.    What 


198  Alphonse  Daudet. 

more  have  I  to  add?  In  accordance  with  my  soul 
and  memory  I  have  sketched  the  portrait  of  a 
humauy  simple  yet  complex,  sensitive  yet  prophetic 
in  mind,  in  the  strength  of  his  age  and  his  works. 
If  it  has  happened  that  I  have  grown  weak  by 
the  way,  his  great  shade  will  pardon  me  for  it,  for 
that  shade  knows  that  I  was  sincere ;  hereafter 
it  shall  precede  me  on  the  short  or  long  pathway 
of  my  life,  even  as  formerly  he  guided  the  steps 
of  his  child. 

LEON   DAUDET. 

This  28th  of  March 
1808. 


APPENDIX. 


APPENDIX. 


CONCERNING  THE   IMAGINATION. 
A   DIALOGUE   BETWEEN   MY    FATHER   AND   ME. 

To  Mme.  Alphonse  Daudet  : 

Conversation  is  my  greatest  delight.  To  stroll  through 
the  field  of  ideas,  to  play  the  vagabond  with  words  and 
points  of  view,  to  loaf  about,  regarding  human  beings  and 
things  —  that  seems  to  me  the  highest  of  all  pleasures 
and  the  moment  in  life  when  a  person  is  the  least  distant 
from  the  joys  of  imagination. 

But  one  must  have  a  good  partner.  Lovers  of  this 
lofty  game  prefer  that  all  good  qualities  and  all  defects 
should  show  themselves  in  their  full  boldness  and  color- 
for  instance,  that  the  violent  man  should  be  violent, 
that  the  close  reasoner  should  reason,  the  sensitive  man 
should  nervously  lay  bare  his  sensitiveness,  the  phil- 
osopher should  coldly  develop  his  theories.  Every  char- 
acter is  a  good  one  which  does  not  try  to  dissemble, 
because  then  fear  of  humbug  fnakes  the  conversation 
heavy  atid  deprives  it  of  that  flowing,  utiexpected  and 
golden  ease  which  makes  it  like  the  natural  forces  in 
their  quick  and  lively  beauty. 

I  have  known  feverish  and  fanatical  talkers  whose 
vigor  was  a  thiftg  to  admire.     A  troop  of  reminiscences 


202  Alp  house  Daudet. 

and  impromptus  poured  forth  helter-skelter,  as  if  through 
a  portal  of  life,  across  the  magnificent  fields  of  their 
minds ;  and  these  memories  were  fragile,  unforgettable 
winged  things,  and  their  impro7tiptus  rolled  out  with  the 
thunder  of  a  torrent,  enriched  by  every  surrounding 
object  or  whatsoever  the  heavens  and  aspect  round  about, 
whatsoever  waters  and  gestures,  whatsoever  the  fields  or 
the  streets  might  provide  for  the  clever  conversationalist 
—  what  time  the  prophetic  tripod  of  his  eloquence  shud- 
ders hard  and  his  opponent,  contradicting  him,  shall  start 
the  flame  of  his  imagination  ! 

I  have  seen  heavy  wains  which  were  difficult  to  start, 
but  at  last  shook  the  very  earth  like  the  phenomena  of 
nature  ;  and  I  have  known  expert  bowmen  whose  arrows 
reached  the  empyrean,  like  swallows  in  good  weather.  I 
have  known  subtle  intellects  who  talked  by  means  of  sym- 
bols and  of  signs  that  expressed  signs,  just  as  the 
fapanese  work  in  jade  or  ivory,  and  lovers  of  clearness 
who  with  their  flamboyant  metaphors  pierced  holes  in  the 
darkest  shadows. 

I  have  known  scientific  men  supported  by  the  "  actual 
fact "  and  conscientious  to  the  verge  of  craziness,  and 
also  poets  whom  nothing  can  stop,  who  are  wildly  excited 
by  the  absurd;  and  all  those  voices,  heavy  or  sombre, 
shrill  or  light,  feverish  or  calm,  biting  or  whining,  have 
in  my  recollection  such  an  intensity  that  at  times  they 
return  to  vex  my  dreams. 

I  conversed  best  and  most  with  my  father.  I  shall 
permit  myself  to  state  this  one  only  from  amongst  the 
crowd  of  truthful  eulogies  which  my  rdle  as  a  son  pre- 
vents me  frofn  declaring  —  that  he,  my  father,  is  inex- 
hatistible  and  always  ready  to  engage,  two  wonderful 
qualities  which   every  good  talker  will  appreciate.     In 


Appendix.  203 

addition  to  this,  in  order  that  the  flame  shall  always 
be  big  and  bright,  he  throws  fresh  wood  all  the  time  to 
that  hearth  where  ideas  and  words  are  smoking.  And 
to  conclude,  he  listens  to  his  partner  and  does  not,  like 
certain  egoistical  bores,  drag  him  over  upon  his  own 
ground.  Any  field  is  good  for  him,  and,  because  of  an 
inconceivably  brilliant  imagination,  he  makes  it  fertile  at 
once. 

Now  it  is  just  exactly  the  imagination  which  is  our 
commonest  subject —  a  rich  and  fertile  matter  without  end 
that  never  weanes  one.  Through  man's  will  imagina- 
tion embraces  the  whole  world,  and  in  man's  mind 
imagination  causes  the  whole  world  to  find  its  place. 
It  is  the  grand  treasury  of  poets,  heroes  and  of  all  beau- 
ties. Imagination  alone  renders  life  possible,  which 
without  it  is  flat,  monotonous  and  dark.  It  alone  gives 
value  to  love,  even  to  death  and  annihilation. 

So,  then,  let  us  suppose  that  my  father  and  I  are  walk- 
ing arm-in-arm  about  the  garden  at  Chanipj-osay  on 
one  of  those  clear  and  golden  mornings  in  sutnmer  when 
a  bird  seems  to  hide  behiiid  every  leaf.  I  am  hardly 
well  awake  after  twelve  hours  of  a  dreamless  sleep. 
But  my  father' s  voice  puts  life  into  me  and  little  by  little 
thaws  me  out. 

My  Father  somewhat  ironical,  as  one  can  see  in 
that  corner  of  his  eye  which  I  know  so  well) .  —  Oh,  oh, 
so  you  have  a  theory  concerning  the  imagination  !  Be- 
ware of  that ;  a  theory  is  a  hard  load  to  carry,  it  is  fear- 
some !  Once  you  are  in  it  you  can  never  get  out.  One 
finds  it  necessary  to  fold  and  crease  facts  and  deform 
them  in  order  to  make  them  fit  that  strange  and  uncom- 
fortable trunk. 

I.  —  But,  my    dear    father,  one    has  no  clear   ideas 


204  Alphonse  Daudet. 

without  theory.  Otherwise  facts  He  side  by  side  like 
children's  toys  and  the  mind  does  not  progress.  With- 
out general  ideas  our  most  acute  sensations  and  most 
delicate  sentiments  remain  in  the  domain  of  the  animal 
kingdom. 

My  Father  {getting  excited) .  —  But  let  me  tell  you 
that  oftenest  these  general  ideas  completely  fool  us  and 
that  one  good  fact  which  has  been  carefully  observed  by 
undimmed  eyes  is  as  vast  and  troublesome  and  as  fruit- 
ful as  any  hypothesis  you  may  mention.  Of  course  I  do 
not  ask  people  to  plant  themselves  on  a  note  or  a  com- 
mentary ;  1  do  not  ask  a  man  to  be  a  mere  observer, 
a  fellow  with  a  pair  of  spectacles  or  an  eye-glass  or  any 
other  kind  of  diminishing-glass ;  but  just  look  at  Darwin, 
look  at  Claude  Bernard  —  there  are  solid  and  true 
friends  of  reality ;  I  admire  their  way  of  doing ;  their 
method  is  the  one  that  delights  me  ! 

I.  — They  also  built  hypotheses. 

Mv  Father.  —  Quite  true  ;  but  not  in  the  way  the  meta- 
physicians do.  They  have  observed  this,  and  then  that, 
and  then  the  next  thing.  They  tell  you  that  ingenuously, 
like  the  poets  they  are,  with  a  strong  bias  toward  the 
picturesque.  And  they  allow  the  obscure  work  of 
generalization  to  go  on  in  the  mind  of  the  reader.  .  .  . 
But  I  don't  want  to  discourage  you.  So,  then,  you  're 
going  to  unfold  to  me  a  theory  concerning  the  imagina- 
tion. .  .  .  How  did  it  come  to  you? 

1.  —  While  reading  Shakespeare  and  Balzac.  As  soon 
as  we  can  get  to  the  country,  where,  as  you  know,  they 
compose  along  with  Sainte-Beuve  the  library,  I  seize 
upon  them  with  a  lover's  madness.  There  be  the  mis- 
tresses who  never  deceive  you  !  I  know  them  by  heart, 
the  way  you  do,  and  still  every  time  that  I  plunge  into 


Appendix.  205 

them  again  my  brain  is  the  richer  for  it  and  I  feel 
myself  more  energetic  and  alive. 

My  Father.  —  'T  is  the  wine  of  life.  .  .  .  Magnifi- 
cently does  it  circulate  in  man.  They  made  a  deep  im- 
pression on  me  at  an  early  age  as  they  have  upon  you, 
and  to  such  a  degree  that  I  can  recall  having  made 
some  character  in  Shakespeare,  Polonius  I  think,  the 
hero  of  one  of  my  first  stories.  The  names  of  Balzac 
and  Shakespeare,  Shakespeare  and  Balzac,  are  mingled 
in  my  mind ;  I  hardly  separate  one  from  the  other.  It 
has  often  happened  that,  confronted  with  a  new  person, 
or  a  new  sensation,  I  have  had  recourse  to  them  in 
order  to  label  the  said  person  or  sensation  with  the 
name  of  one  of  their  characters  or  with  one  of  their 
stunning  formulas.  You  have,  of  course,  noticed  the 
subterranean  analogies  between  those  two  geniuses? 

I.  —  Most  striking  analogies  !  They  have  treated  the 
very  same  subjects.  Pere  Goriot  and  King  Lear,  Pere 
Grandet  and  Shylock.  Les  Choua?is,  that  admirable 
romance,  has  the  same  story  as  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
namely,  love  between  two  people  which  has  been  held 
in  check  by  family  or  race  hatreds.  On  this  side  are 
the  Montagues,  who  are  the  same  as  the  men  of  the 
White  Cockades ;  on  that  are  the  Capulets,  who  are  the 
Blues.  Montauran  is  Romeo.  Mademoiselle  de  Ver- 
neuil  is  Juliet.  And  that  odor  of  voluptuousness  and 
death  which  sheds  its  perfume  around  the  lovers  in 
Verona  renders  the  lovers  of  Fougeres  fragrant  during 
their  tragical  wedding-night. 

My  Father.  —  Les  Chouans  is  one  of  my  favorite 
books.  It  is  amusing  that  you  should  have  inherited 
that  taste.  What  I  perhaps  admire  the  most  in  Balzac  is 
his  power  of  dialogue,  the  way  he  puts  in  the  mouth  of 


2o6  Alphonse  Daudet 

each  of  his  creations  the  exact  word,  what  I  call  the 
dominant  word,  that  phrase  which  displays  and  opens 
up  a  whole  temperament. 

I.  —  And  yet  Balzac  was  always  a  failure  on  the 
boards. 

My  Father.  —  It  almost  seems  as  if  his  imagination 
was  too  powerful  and  representative  for  the  footlights, 
the  painted  cheeks,  the  monologues  and  all  the  rest  of 
the  hypocritical  cant  of  the  stage.  That  monster  carries 
everything  along  with  him,  both  scenery  and  characters. 
And  how  well  he  knows  how  to  place  his  footlights ;  how 
he  understands  the  way  of  throwing  light  into  a  town  or 
a  ward  or  a  room !  And  what  an  art  he  has  for  the 
gradations  !  To-night,  after  dinner,  if  nobody  comes  to 
bother  us,  let  us  read  in  Les  Chouans  to  the  children 
the  assassination  of  Galope-Chopine  by  March-a-Terre 
and  Pille-Miche.  You  remember  it,  don't  you?  .  .  . 
The  mist-hung  morning,  the  tragical  approach  of  the 
two  Chouans,  their  silence  and  their  hats?  And  that 
drop  of  cider  which  falls  rhythmically  from  the  pitcher  ! 
There  is  a  detail  which  would  be  ridiculous  on  the  stage, 
and  yet  which,  in  the  book,  is  sublime.  And  then  those 
globules  of  milk  which  their  knives  crush  against  the 
surface  of  their  thick  hunches  of  bread  !  Ah,  what  a 
man,  what  a  man  ! 

I  {itisidiotisly  and  with  an  eye  oti  my  theory). — 
Yes,  he  contained  all  the  rest  within  himself! 

Mv  Father.  —  That 's  it  —  or  at  any  rate  he  made 
them  live  again  "  according  to  the  swing  of  his  imagina- 
tion "  as  old  Montaigne  would  have  said.  When  you 
have  asked  me  in  what  talent  consists,  I  have  answered 
you,  talent  is  an  intensity  of  life.  That  is  not  a  mere 
conventional  explanation.     I  am  firmly  persuaded  that 


Appendix.  207 

Balzac  and  Shakespeare  had  within  themselves  a  number 
of  violently  excited  lives,  and  that  they  had  distributed 
them  through  their  works. 

I.  —  There  you  are  right  into  my  theory  !  I  shall  try 
to  be  clear  and  not  to  jostle  your  Latin  spirit,  as  you 
call  it.  There  is  one  sublime  faculty  which  the  philoso- 
phers have  neglected  too  much,  and  it  is  in  my  humble 
opinion  one  of  the  keys  to  nature  :  the  faculty  of  Imi- 
tation or  in  the  etymological  sense  Hypocrisy ;  the  de- 
sire to  slip  into  the  skin  of  another  person,  pull  on  his 
mask  and  submit  oneself  to  the  passions  which  torment 
him. 

My  Father.  —  The  desire  of  approaching  other 
human  beings  and  assimilating  their  habits  of  mind  and 
opinions  is  just  as  violent  as  the  contrary  desire  to 
resist  them. 

I.  —  Well  then,  that  faculty  of  hypocrisy  is  common 
among  human  beings,  but  when  pushed  to  the  point  of 
paroxysm  in  men  of  genius  it  constitutes  their  greatest 
beauty  and  their  highest  gift.  By  means  of  it  Shake- 
speare is  Shylock  and  Balzac  is  Grandet  or  Gobsek ;  by 
means  of  it  one  is  Rosalind,  Desdemona,  Miranda  and 
then  again  Caliban,  Richard  III.,  Macbeth,  and  the 
other  is  in  turn  Madame  de  Maufrigneuse,  Madame 
d'Esparre,  the  Princesse  de  Cadigan,  and  then  Hulot, 
Philippe  Brideau  and  de  Marsay.  It  is  perfectly  certain 
that  Shakespeare  and  Balzac  did  much  more  than 
observe  the  men  about  them  and  reconstruct  life  in 
accordance  with  their  observation.  They  metamorphosed 
themselves  into  a  multitude  of  characters  and  tempera- 
ments, whose  mere  outlines  they  possessed  within 
them.  Their  works  are  the  result  of  two  series  of 
metempsychoses.     That  is  why  they  astonish  us  to  such  a 


2o8  Alphonse  Daudet, 

degree.  That  is  why  their  dialogues  are  lit  with  a  glare 
of  truth  so  intense  that  the  meanest  characters  show  the 
reflection  from  it  on  their  faces. 

Mv  Father.  —  I  just  recall  a  speech  by  Balzac  to  a 
mystic  writer  nowadays  little  known,  but  a  very  elo- 
quent one  —  to  Raymond  Brucker,  author  of  Chas  de 
V Aiguille :  "  My  dear  Balzac,  where  do  you  make  your 
observations  of  your  heroines  and  heroes  ?  "  —  "  Ho,  my 
friend,  how  do  you  suppose  I  can  find  time  to  observe  ? 
I  hardly  have  time  enough  to  write."  That  proves  that 
the  mechanism  which  you  indicate  was  known  to  Balzac 
himself. 

I.  —  Balzac  knew  everything.  An  imagination  like 
his  has  perceived  everything  and  co-ordinated  every- 
thing. He  even  had  the  gift  of  prophecy,  since  they 
say  that  he  molded  his  own  period  on  the  model  of  the 
"  Com^die  Humaine."  In  order  to  be  a  sibyl  it  was 
necessary  only  to  reason  rightly  and  to  arrange  the 
events  in  their  right  series.  But  do  you  not  find  that 
venturesome  idea  seductive  —  that  a  spirit  should  in- 
clude within  itself  all  the  passionate  or  sentimental 
characteristics  —  in  a  state  of  germs,  of  course  ?  Then 
observation  would  merely  play  the  rdle  of  the  resur- 
rector.  That  idea  would  give  meaning  to  those  moral 
crystallizations  which  are  called  virtues  and  vices  —  those 
deeply-founded  structures  of  avarice,  pride,  luxury, 
timidity,  heroism,  etc. 

My  Father  {laughing).  —  When  the  association  of 
ideas,  as  the  pedants  say,  is  rich,  it  is  called  imagination. 
Such  an  hypothesis  concerning  the  imagination  would 
not  displease  me  at  all.  In  the  morning  when  I  get  to 
my  work-table  and  find  in  my  portfolio  all  my  characters 
standing  about,  waiting  for  the  life  which  I  am  to  blow 


Appendix.  209 

into  them,  I  certainly  seem  to  myself  like  that  magician, 
or,  if  you  prefer  the  word,  that  "  hypocrite,"  who  is  so 
clever  at  slipping  into  temperaments  and  characters  and 
at  rousing  sentiments  and  sensations  by  the  light  of  the 
sparkles  of  memory. 

I.  —  Are  there  not  moments  when  your  illusion  is 
absolutely  complete,  and  when,  like  the  actor  whom  his 
rdle  carries  away  and  transfigures,  you  enter  so  deeply 
into  the  flesh  and  blood  of  one  of  your  children  of 
romance  that  you  almost  forget  your  own  personality  ? 

My  Father.  —  That  happens  seldom,  but  it  does 
happen.  It  is  very  possible  that  with  certain  privileged 
writers  the  phenomenon  may  be  habitual.  I  think  it  was 
Balzac  who  answered  some  one  who  reproached  him  for 
melancholy  :  "  I  am  sad  ...  I  am  sad,  because  I  have 
just  killed  Vautrin  !  " 

I.  —  This  essay  on  the  metamorphoses  of  the  author 
into  his  different  characters  would  be  narrow  if  there 
were  no  continuations.  I  am  astonished  that  our  period 
has  not  produced  a  grand  philosophy  of  sensibility, 
creating  its  own  object  according  to  Hegel's  formula. 
All  the  philosophies  which  we  have  had  up  to  the  present 
day,  all  without  exception,  have  been  philosophies  oi 
the  intelligence,  grand  systems  very  cleverly  arranged  by 
induction  and  deduction  to  tell  how  our  brain  acts  when 
it  studies  itself.  Pascal,  that  clever  and  nervous  mind, 
that  martyr  with  a  singing  soul,  Pascal  has  conceived  of 
the  universe  within  us  as  a  series  in  slight  disaccord 
with  the  series  of  the  universe  without  us,  and  has  recon- 
ciled the  two  by  means  of  Grace.  By  a  prodigious 
effort  Spinoza  has  united  sensibihty  with  intelligence, 
and  by  studying  the  woof  of  our  impressions  he  made 
the  discovery  that  it  was  identical  with  that  of  our  judg- 

14 


2IO  Alphonse  Daudet. 

ments.  There  cannot  be  two  tapestries  in  the  loom  of 
destiny.  We  might  have  doubted  it,  had  it  not  been  for 
that  great  man,  but  we  ought  to  be  thankful  to  him  for 
having  painted  an  original  picture  of  the  human  senti- 
ments in  so  far  as  they  are  subject  to  reason. 

All  those  monuments  are  admirable :  Le  Disc  ours 
sur  la  Methode  and  the  Pensees  by  Pascal,  and  the 
Ethics  and  the  Monadology  and  the  Foundation  oj 
the  Metaphysic  of  Habits,  will  rightfully  remain  the 
object  of  respect  for  future  generations ;  but  in  a  certain 
way  they  are  the  dwellings  of  the  past.  As  little  as  we 
possess  a  truly  modern  architecture  do  we  possess  a 
modern  philosophy  which  satisfies  our  existing  culture. 

My  Father.  —  Now  you  explain  why  philosophy  has 
so  little  interest  for  me.  It  is  all  very  well  to  apply  and 
force  myself,  I  yawn  over  the  Pure  Reason  and  the 
formulas  of  Spinoza  have  always  given  me  the  impres- 
sion of  a  set  of  prepared  skeletons. 

I.  —  Because  you  are  a  complete  "sensitive,"  con- 
scious and  sincere.  What  you  would  like  to  find  in  a 
philosophical  work  is  an  attempt  at  explanation  of 
those  mysterious  flashes  of  sensibility,  those  fugitive 
appearances  which  cause  us  to  see  a  contrary  emotion 
even  in  an  emotion  itself.  Carlyle,  Emerson,  Novalis, 
Maeterlinck  —  there  are  marvellous  dreamers  for  you ; 
and  very  often  the  will-o'-the-wisps  of  the  swamps  leap 
and  dance  on  their  dreams,  so  intense  and  charged  with 
intellectual  fever  are  they.  But  although  they  have 
approached  contemporary  sensibility  they  have  by  no 
means  taken  possession  of  it  yet.  A  book  difficult  to 
write  would  be  an  essay  on  the  sentient  states  of  con- 
sciousness. 

It  is  certain  that  it  will  be  written.     It  will  spring 


Appendix.  211 

from  a  general  desire  for  it,  as  all  great  and  necessary 
works  which  are  the  ofifsprings  of  the  times  and  of  ener- 
vation do  spring.  Just  as  round  our  over-refined  states 
of  sensation  (new  words  are  surely  necessary  for  new 
ideas)  there  rises  a  sort  of  vapor  which  excites  and 
makes  us  lucid  in  mind,  so  in  the  same  way  certain 
signs  announce  a  great  epoch-making  work  about  those 
periods  which  are  fertile  in  intellectual  work. 

My  Father.  —  Here  is  one  of  my  Hveliest  sensations. 
One  day  during  a  terrible  heat  I  was  crossing  the  Place 
de  la  Concorde  which  was  shining  and  vibrating  like  a 
copper  saucepan.  A  watering-cart  passed  by.  A  little 
butterfly  was  playing  and  dancing  about  the  thin  rain  of 
drops  which  the  cart  was  emitting  and  turning  into  vapor 
along  a  narrow  luminous  spray.  That  butterfly  played 
and  danced  with  a  fever  and  an  agility  in  following  the 
jet  of  water  and  a  sense  of  pleasure  which  seemed  to 
enter  into  my  spirit  to  an  unaccustomed  depth,  and 
troubled  me  like  the  sensitive  gradation-marker  for 
every  kind  of  intoxication  and  vivid  enjoyment,  it 
troubled  me  with  the  subtlety  and  ephemeral  wisdom  of 
such  joys.  Under  that  implacable  hot  sky,  in  a  flash 
which  was  almost  painful  through  its  intensity,  I  had  a 
glimpse  of  a  multitude  of  impressions,  some  of  them 
melancholy,  some  of  them  joyous,  the  exact  sequence 
of  which  I  should  have  great  difiiculty  in  recollecting, 
but  they  trouble  me  still,  and  too  hot  a  sun  recalls  to 
my  memory  the  tmjibril  and  the  butterfly. 

I. — The  philosopher  of  whom  I  speak  and  whom 
I  would  like  to  see  would  take  account  of  observations 
like  those ;  your  anecdote  is  an  admirable  step  in  my 
argument.  For  every  theory  having  to  do  with  sensibility, 
every  study  applied  to  those  miraculous  regions  whence 


212  Alp  house  Daudet, 

our  power,  our  joys  and  pains  derive,  all  philosophy  at 
such  heights,  presuppose  a  thorough  study  of  the  imagi- 
nation. For  if  reason  and  judgment  govern  ordinary 
acts  and  all  movements  which  tend  to  struggle  for  life 
and  preserve  that  life  notwithstanding  obstacles,  the 
imagination  and  the  faculty  of  receiving  images  regulate 
sensibility.  Sensibility  and  imagination  are  two  con- 
necting terms.  That  is  what  is  not  sufficiently  understood. 
When  I  see  a  very  joyous  or  very  melancholy  child  who 
knows  how  to  amuse  himself  alone  and  do  without  his 
little  comrades,  thus  affording  the  proof  of  a  lively  and  a 
personal  sensibility,  I  say  to  myself:  there  is  a  future 
"  imaginative."  It  is  a  rule  that  never  fails.  The  phil- 
osopher whom  we  are  clamoring  for  should  write  it  at 
the  head  of  his  essay. 

My  Father.  —  Is  it  not  sensibility  which  allows  those 
metamorphoses  to  take  place  of  which  we  were  speaking 
just  now?  You  know  my  love  for  vagabonds,  for  all 
those  poor  devils  just  the  same  color  as  the  turnpike, 
who  stop  at  the  well  to  take  a  drink,  and  whose  slightest 
movements  I  used  to  watch  when  we  dwelt  in  that 
house  by  the  side  of  the  high-road?  Well,  you  must 
not  laugh,  but  I  assure  you  that  sometimes  I  have  left 
my  room  and  house  and  my  own  skin  and  have  en- 
tered underhand  into  those  organisms,  penetrating  those 
wretched  longings  and  terrible  thirsts,  those  frightful 
feelings  of  contentment  in  bread,  wine  and  shade. 
There  lies  a  chapter  on  sensibility  !  Was  it  pity,  that 
great  moral  spring  which  led  me  on,  or  was  it  a  central 
and  basic  curiosity  which  sharpened  my  sight  and  wits? 
I  do  not  know.  All  that  I  know  is  that  I  have  lived 
the  life  of  those  wanderers  and  nomads,  of  those  uncon- 
scious poets.     What  delightful  things  might  be  written 


Appendix.  213 

about  them  !  Did  you  ever  ponder  —  it  is  that  butterfly 
which  rouses  me  still  —  did  you  ever  ponder  on  their 
long  and  deep  melancholies,  on  all  the  beauties  of  nature 
which  penetrate  them  without  their  knowing  it,  those 
grain-fields,  that  rustling  and  moving  yellow  sea  of  wheat- 
heads,  the  rose-colored  swales  and  solitary  woods  where 
the  rabbits  hold  their  congregations,  the  fringes  of  the 
forest,  so  fresh  and  beautiful  and  impressive?  One  day 
whilst  you  were  still  a  child  I  was  taking  you  the  other 
side  of  the  S^nart  forest  and  we  saw  two  white  pigeons 
that  were  winging  their  way  side  by  side  beneath  a 
thunderstorm,  skirting  the  opaque  and  copper-edged 
clouds.  Well,  all  that  poetry  of  nature  circulates 
through  the  vagabond  along  with  his  blood  and  his 
wretchedness,  and  so,  in  that  philosophy  which  you  talk 
of,  it  ought  to  form  a  chapter  apart,  because  there  lies 
an  assemblage  of  true  and  primordial  sensations. 

{After  a  moment's  reflection).  —  Now,  you  see,  abstract 
ideas  do  not  constitute  healthy  nourishment.  Very  soon 
they  degenerate  into  a  juggling  trick  and  the  mind  that 
gives  itself  up  to  them  loses  in  relief  and  color.  The 
man  who  desires  to  talk  about  the  imagination  splits 
up  his  subject  into  chapters  and  for  each  chapter  he 
devises  a  series  of  cold  arguments.  Why  does  he  not 
proceed  by  examples?  Contemporary  novels,  the  his- 
torical romance,  such  as  we  make  it  to-day,  have  taught 
me  one  thing :  Everything  hangs  together  in  the  moral 
world.  All  the  while  that  certain  given  personages  are 
in  combination  to  form  a  given  situation,  beneath  or 
above  them  a  comedy  or  little  drama  plays  itself  along 
which  is  the  "  fresco  "  or  caricature  of  that  very  situa- 
tion and  defines  it ;  very  often  a  miser  has  in  his  dining- 
room  a  common  print  representing  the    grasshopper's 


214  Alphonse  Daudet. 

visit  to  the  ant.  Hamlet,  preoccupied  by  a  crime  it 
is  necessary  to  perform,  receives  the  actors  at  Elsinore 
instigated  by  a  marvellously  just  intuition,  and  orders 
them  to  play  a  scene  which  will  give  everybody  a  fore- 
taste of  murder  and  that  terror  which  is  felt  when  the 
torches  are  carried  out.  We  are  Hamlets  for  ever 
and  ever.  We  never  accomplish  an  act  which  is  not 
accompanied  by  additional  phenomena  in  which  that 
act  is  reflected  and  made  ready;  alongside  of  the 
masterpiece  nature  accumulates  conscientiously  the 
preliminary  sketches. 

All  this  I  say  in  order  to  explain  to  you  why  the  phi- 
losopher, while  he  shall  be  tracing  the  similar  laws  of 
imagination  and  sensibility,  ought  to  describe  on  a 
parallel  line  various  examples  and  episodes  to  illustrate 
his  text,  just  as  we  do  for  little  children.  I  do  not 
know  a  finer  book  than  the  work  on  English  literature 
by  Taine.  Every  moment  the  writer  turns  to  the  pic- 
ture and  shows  us  an  example  of  his  theory.  His  formu- 
las are  enriched  by  admirable  verses  from  Shakespeare, 
Byron  or  Keats,  or  by  some  incisive  tirade  from  Swift 
or  Fielding.  Literature  is  so  abstract  an  art,  so  separated 
from  actual  things,  that  one  cannot  bind  it  to  the  earth 
by  too  solid  and  powerful  chains.  And  I  would  make 
the  same  statement  concerning  philosophy,  if  indeed  it 
cares  to  really  touch  us  and  make  an  impression  upon 
our  period. 

/.  —  A  convenient  method  is  to  describe  human  beings 
as  types  in  order  to  make  them  carry  that  faculty  of 
mind  which  one  is  studying.  According  to  me,  Balzac's 
works  ought  to  be  considered  a  phenomenon  of  the 
highest  cerebrality,  as  a  series  of  examples  for  just  such 
a  philosophy  of  feeling.     Alive  within  himself  the  incom- 


Appendix,  215 

parable  author  of  the  Comedie  Humaine  had  a  power 
which  permitted  him  to  place  outside  himself  those  hu- 
man characteristics  with  which  his  soul  was  filled.  That 
power  is  Desire,  "  the  essence  of  man  "  as  Spinoza  said, 
that  desire  which  we  all  feel  but  which  we  understand 
so  badly  and  of  which  need  is  nothing  but  a  reduced 
image. 

'  Tis  a  singular  result  of  modem  civilization  that  desire 
increases  while  realization  diminishes.  The  more  society 
sets  men  in  frames  and  fixes  them  into  immovable  ruts 
which  are  generally  degrading  and  embruting,  the  more 
does  it  place  them  in  contact  with  a  number  of  luxu- 
ries and  pleasures  they  cannot  help  longing  for  which 
become  so  many  nightmares  for  them.  Most  of  our 
fellow-men  of  the  present  day  are  in  the  condition  of 
peasants  after  a  visit  to  a  Universal  Exposition,  whom 
the  commonplace  of  their  condition  disgusts,  who  dream 
of  dancing  girls  and  houris,  and  kill  their  old  parents 
in  order  to  enjoy  a  single  night  of  riot.  This  rise  of  de- 
sire has  for  corollary  the  rise  in  the  number  of  suicides. 

"  Je  sortirai,  quant  k  moi,  satisfait 
D'un  monde  ou  Taction  n'est  pas  la  soeur  du  reve."  ^ 

Now  in  the  case  of  Balzac,  as  with  Shakespeare  and 
Racine  and  Dante,  action  is  the  sister  of  imagination. 
For  desire  kills  the  man  who  lacks  imagination,  or  sets 
him  crazy ;  but  it  forces  the  imaginative  man  to  find 
means  to  escape  from  a  world  which  resembles  him  and 
has  the  imprint  of  his  own  exasperation  and  frenzy ;  but 
he  is  the  grand  creator  of  ideas  and  characters. 

My  Father.  —  And  then,  through  a  strange  concatena- 

1  "  For  me  — with  satisfaction  would  I  spurn 
A  world  where  action  is  not  fancy's  twin." 


2i6  Alphonse  Daudet, 

tion,  beauty  is  the  mainspring  of  desire,  or  if  you  prefer, 
the  illusion  of  beauty.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is 
where  poetry  delivers  or  rescues  us.  A  spectacle  too 
beautiful,  an  impression  too  vivid,  incline  our  souls  at 
once  to  melancholy.  And  if  we  are  not  able  to  cast  our 
emotion  into  song,  then  that  melancholy  turns  into  sad- 
ness, and  behold  !  through  the  force  of  desire  beauty 
becomes  the  spring  and  cause  of  pain.  Beauty,  Desire, 
Pain,  are  three  stimulants  of  sensibility  which  the  im- 
agination softens,  extinguishes  and  takes  with  it  into  its 
own  depths. 

There  are  hours  in  life  when  the  reasons  for  the  exist- 
ence of  things  seem  to  be  on  the  very  point  of  appear- 
ing to  us,  when,  leaning  over  to  watch  ourselves,  we 
perceive  the  deep  wlieels  going  and  the  glittering  sheen 
of  our  machine. 

You  remember  seven  or  eight  years  ago  a  certain 
visit  we  made  to  Mistral  in  Provence?  We  passed  a 
charming  day  filled  with  light  and  poetry,  and  Mistral, 
that  great  creator  of  dreams,  had  fairly  intoxicated  us, 
as  much  with  his  talk  as  with  a  marvellous  wine.  Toward 
the  close  of  twilight  we  took  our  way  towards  Tarascon. 
It  was  the  time  of  the  wine  harvest.  Slow  carts  brushed 
past  our  quicker  carriage,  they  were  filled  by  laborers 
with  faces  proud  in  their  hnes  and  girls  showing  a  pagan 
grace.  How  pale  all  those  faces  were  above  the  long 
pale  highway,  underneath  a  sky,  rosy  to  exasperation, 
where  warm  mists  were  floating  !  The  vine-dressers  had 
hung  bunches  of  grapes  upon  the  wayside  crossings, 
their  ofterings  from  remote  antiquity.  In  that  light  air 
happiness,  power  and  delight  in  work  harmonized  with 
each  other  to  such  an  extent  that  the  spectacle  became 
a  glorious  one  and  our  eyes  became  wet  with  tears,  as 


Appendix,  217 

happens  when  all  of  a  sudden  Beauty  raises  her  veil  from 
her  face.  .  .  .  {a  silence,  then  after  reflectioii)  .... 
Yes,  that  is  it,  that  is  it  exactly :  Beauty,  Desire,  Pain. 

I.  —  Such  phases  of  excited  feeling  must  have  been 
the  normal  state  of  a  Shakespeare  or  a  Balzac.  They 
only  saw  the  outer  world  through  the  medium  of  the 
world  which  they  carried  in  their  own  breasts,  or  the 
opera-glass  of  their  imagination.  And  in  fact  all  their 
characters,  no  matter  how  close  they  approach  reality, 
share  the  mark  of  the  Master,  that  is  to  say,  something 
gaunt  and  excessive  which  from  time  to  time  seems  to 
shock  our  good  sense  and  ceases  to  move  us.  King 
Lear  and  Pere  Goriot  degenerate  into  monsters  of  pater- 
nal love  by  the  mere  exercise  of  that  love. 

Do  you  not  feel  that  those  exaggerations  are  yet  one 
proof  more  for  the  origin  of  those  colossal  works  within. 
The  greater  number  of  human  beings  do  not  possess 
complete  sentiments,  or  feelings  that  are  pure,  as  when 
they  leave  the  forge  in  heroic  minds.  They  do  not 
drink  without  much  adulteration  the  wines  of  Love, 
Hatred,  Pity,  Anger  and  so  forth.  .  .  .  They  are  will- 
ing to  content  themselves  with  vague  mixtures,  and  so 
the  hatred  of  this  man  is  partly  supported  by  fear,  and 
the  pity  of  that  man  is  limited  by  his  own  egotism,  and 
the  remorse  of  yonder  third  is  quenched  by  his  rage. 

In  a  word,  passions  for  the  majority  of  human  beings 
become  lessened  in  consequence  of  contact  and  mixture. 
They  lose  their  sharpness,  their  edge  and  color.  They 
become  weak  and  without  interest,  because  they  cease 
to  have  anything  in  them  which  works  toward  splendid 
deeds. 

Now  it  is  among  the  "  imaginatives,"  among  those 
who  are  not  afraid  of  surpassing  reality,  that  we  would 


2i8  Alp  house  Daudet. 

find  the  model  and  typical  passions  if  they  quitted  the 
ordinary  world.  They  subject  them  to  the  movements 
of  their  own  soul,  its  fever  and  ups  and  downs.  They 
lend  them  that  beauty  which  consists  in  marching 
straight  toward  an  end  and  to  the  extreme  limit  of  real- 
ity, notwithstanding  events  or  obstacles.  Every  one  of 
their  characters  accomplishes  his  destiny  impetuously 
and  with  an  imperious  air  and  drives  life  before  him  as 
if  it  were  some  great  cloud  of  dust.  There  is  a  miser, 
Grandet.  He  will  be  miserly  to  the  very  verge  of  the 
mania  of  avarice.  His  hands  and  feet,  his  whole  body 
will  take  the  form  of  his  own  vice,  his  looks  will  take  on 
the  sheen  of  metal,  each  one  of  his  words  will  be 
timorous,  gloomy,  but  at  the  same  time  bearing  the  im- 
press of  a  hard,  implacable  egotism.  Here  is  a  knave, 
Philippe  Brideau.  No  one  has  gone  so  far  and  with 
such  ferocity  in  the  direction  of  knavery.  One  may  take 
them  all  and  stamp  upon  the  brows  of  all  some  vice  or 
some  virtue.  And  that  vice  or  virtue  will  be  without  mix- 
ture of  attenuation  such  as  existed  in  the  first  man. 

Such  works  as  those  move  us  to  such  a  degree  because 
they  spring  from  Truth  enlarged. 

My  Father.  —  Are  we  not  close  upon  the  old  debate 
between  the  Real  and  the  Imaginary?  Although  you  do 
not  belong  to  that  period,  you  have  heard  of  the  howls 
which  greeted  Flaubert  and  his  continuators,  Zola,  the 
Goncourts  and  me.  People  could  not  pardon  us  for 
introducing  the  ordinary  facts  of  life  into  novels.  Yet  it 
is  true  that  since  then  reaUsm  has  lost  ground  and  turned 
aside  into  vulgarity,  and  it  is  true  that  people  have  tried 
to  find  a  doctrine  where  there  was  nothing  but  an  eman- 
cipation. We  demanded  the  right  to  talk  about  every- 
thing, treat  every    subject,  select   our  characters    and 


Appendix,  2 1 9 

pictures  from  any  class  we  chose.  It  cannot  be  denied 
that  n Assommoir  is  a  masterpiece,  nor  that  Germanie 
Lacerteux  is  another.  Good  or  bad,  our  opinions  have 
given  a  Uvely  jump  to  the  national  literature  and  cer- 
tainly no  one  has  a  right  to  complain  of  that. 

But  the  old  reproach  is  different :  "  You  wish  to  paint 
reality?  Then  you  will  be  mere  photographers,  passive 
mirrors,  phonographs,  mere  machines  which  reproduce 
what  falls  into  their  mouths  or  their  pipes  and  moreover 
reproduce  everything  without  choice  or  discrimination. 
You  wish  to  paint  reality ;  but  we  already  know  too 
much  about  reality.  Reality  is  here  about  us  every 
day ;  it  besieges  and  throttles  us.  What  we  ask  of  art  is 
precisely  to  take  us  away  from  the  real  and  show  us 
other  faces,  other  skies,  other  lands  than  those  about 
us  which  weary  us  by  the  monotony  of  their  constant 
presence." 

That  is  a  specious  reproach.  It  troubles  one  because 
it  does  include  a  certain  modicum  of  truth.  Absolutely 
unjust  when  it  applies  to  writers  like  Flaubert,  Zola, 
Goncourt,  it  does  have  grounds  when  it  comes  to 
wretched  copyists  and  scribblers  who  apply  without  any 
talent  formulas  they  have  badly  understood. 

And  the  knot  of  the  problem  —  that  is  why  I  am  at- 
tacking it  just  now  —  the  knot  of  the  problem  lies 
entirely  in  the  imagination. 

I.  —  I  must  confess  to  you  that  the  adventures  of 
magnificent  characters,  such  as  heroes,  will  always  interest 
me  more  than  those  of  little  ordinary  citizens  ;  and  I  call 
magnificent  characters  not  only  kings  and  captains,  but 
likewise  philosophers,  authors  and  artists.  The  bursts 
of  rage  which  that  which  has  been  so  coarsely  entitled 
"  naturalism  "  has  provoked  have  nearly  caused  us   to 


220  Alphonse  Daudet. 

turn  to  literature  of  exceptional  characters.  From  this 
point  of  view  Symbolism  was  an  inevitable  reaction. 

My  Father.  —  It  is  not  a  question  here  of  symbolism 
or  naturalism.  You  know  how  little  importance  I  have 
always  given  to  schools  and  classifications.  I  hate  them 
all.     I  belong  to  none  of  them. 

We  have  to  do  here  with  reality  and  truth.  Now 
there  is  nothing  outside  of  the  real.  There  is  nothing 
outside  of  the  true.  And  those  two  terms  meet  again  in 
a  certain  virtue  :  Sincerity.  Note  that  my  formula  is 
broad.  A  sincere  lyrical  writer  is  in  the  way  of  truth 
when  he  gives  himself  up  to  lyricism,  and  though  he  may 
change  the  lines  of  reality  in  accordance  with  the  laws 
and  build  of  his  brain,  remains  true  so  far  as  his  con- 
science is  concerned.  He  does  not  seek  knowingly  the 
false.  A  sincere  mystic  is  in  the  way  of  truth  when  he 
constructs  his  castles  of  clouds  and  mists  according  to 
his  own  consciousness  and  in  accord  with  those  changes 
in  line  or  shape  which  that  same  consciousness  of  his 
produces  in  the  real. 

In  other  terms,  reality  is  subject  to  the  metamorphoses 
of  the  imagination,  but  without  it,  lacking  such  nourish- 
ment, the  imagination  would  be  grinding  upon  empti- 
ness, it  would  break  down  and  fall  to  ruins,  turning  into 
craziness  or  imbecility.  And  whatever  may  be  the  form 
and  degree  of  the  imagination,  the  owner  of  that  imagi- 
nation is  sincere  in  regard  to  it,  so  long  as  he  shows 
his  products  just  as  they  come  from  his  factory. 

There  are  no  forms  of  art,  there  are  merely  tempera- 
ments. Well,  these  temperaments  are  so  numerous  and 
varied  that  they  never  exhaust  the  real.  An  original 
spirit  when  it  comes  into  this  world  may  have  the  plan 
of  reconstructing  the  world.     As  long  as  this  world  lasts 


Appendix,  2  2 1 

he  will  never  use  up  all  the  innumerable  resources  which 
life,  and  the  harms  which  life  is  subject  to,  present 
forever  to  the  imagination. 

Innumerable  resources  !  I  have  lived  a  good  deal ; 
when  still  quite  young  I  had  the  faculty  of  observing; 
and,  so  far  as  the  imagination  goes,  I  have  known  during 
my  childhood  all  the  terrors  felt  by  corsairs,  explorers 
and  the  abandoned  ones.  Well,  every  day  I  get  a  sur- 
prise and  have  some  new  observation  to  make ;  and 
particularly  I  realize  that  I  have  made  mistakes.  To 
recognize  one's  mistake  and  to  confess  it  is  the  beginning 
of  that  science  which  has  not  yet  received  a  name,  and 
nevertheless  't  is  one  that  seems  to  me  the  highest  and 
most  important  of  all  sciences,  since  it  consists  of  ex- 
tracting from  life  all  the  instruction  which  that  life  con- 
tains, since  it  includes  morals,  psychology  and  physiology, 
since  moreover  it  does  not  destroy  pity  and  does  not 
excite  pride,  since  it  has  neither  professorial  chair,  nor 
pedants,  nor  institutes,  and  since  it  carries  its  recompense 
in  itself. 

I.  —  Is  not  that  science  in  which  imagination  finds  its 
resources  precisely  the  school  of  sensibility? 

My  Father.  —  It  is  that  and  something  beside.  You 
are  right  in  saying  that  it  enriches  the  imagination. 
The  great  "  imaginatives,"  the  great  observers  of  the 
human  heart,  have  carried  that  science  with  them  as 
though  it  were  some  new  organ  in  their  breast  and  have 
used  it  as  easily  as  they  breathed  or  digested.  It  exists 
in  every  page  of  Montaigne,  showing  itself  in  that  good- 
humored  and  fragmentary  form  which  alone  suits  it, 
because  it  is  a  science  which  must  fear  axioms,  deduc- 
tions, formulas  and  other  fribbles.  It  ought  to  wear  its 
belt  very  loose.     Pascal,  who  has  enriched  it  with  many 


222  Alphonse  Daudet. 

admirable  discoveries,  nevertheless  had  an  imagination 
too  mathematical  for  it,  and  since  it  is  the  science  of 
life,  what  is  necessary  to  it,  beyond  everything  else,  is  a 
lively  imagination. 

I.  —  Do  you  believe  that  this  science  is  destined  to 
have  a  great  future  ? 

My  Father.  —  Greater  than  any  other.  Since 
Auguste  Comte  and  the  Philosophie  Positive  the  scient- 
ists in  all  the  exact  sciences  have  been  imagining 
that  their  progress  was  continuous  and  without  limit. 
And  they  regard  artists  with  disdain,  because,  as  they 
say,  they  do  not  progress.  Now  in  the  first  place,  do 
we  not  progress,  are  we  stationary?  Down  the  long 
history  of  letters  and  arts,  is  it  not  possible  to  observe 
certain  modifications  of  this  Sensibility  and  this  Imagina- 
tion, concerning  which  we  were  talking  just  now?  There 
is  an  entirely  new  problem  and  one  which  will  not  be 
wanting  in  interest ! 

But  apart  from  all  that,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  it  is 
at  all  demonstrated  that  the  progress  of  science  is  con- 
tinuous and  without  limit.  In  science  as  in  art  every 
original  mind  tends  to  quit  the  paths  trodden  hard  by 
his  predecessors  in  order  to  make  a  path  for  himself.  It 
results  from  this  that  very  rarely  does  a  field  of  study  in 
which  some  man  of  genius  has  accomplished  tremendous 
progress  continue  to  attract  the  attention  of  superior 
minds ;  the  domain  of  science  seems  to  me  thus  filled 
with  regions  of  great  importance  which  have  not  been 
thoroughly  explored. 

I.  —  If  one  were  to  study  the  movements  and  march 
of  the  scientific  imagination  in  this  century,  one  would 
find  a  striking  confirmation  of  what  you  say  in  the  list  of 
discoveries.     Since  the  time  of  Bichat,  who  has  taken  up 


Appendix.  223 

again  the  microscopic  study  of  tissues  and  of  their  rela- 
tions? a  study  which  was  entirely  different  from  those 
histological  labors  which  are  so  much  the  fashion  nowa- 
days. Since  the  time  of  Claude  Bernard,  who  has  taken 
up  again  the  thorough  study  of  the  vaso-motor  nerves 
and  the  source  of  animal  heat  ?  The  school  of  La  Salpe- 
tridre  has  popularized  the  works  of  Duchenne  of  Bou- 
logne, but  it  has  completely  abandoned  the  study  of  the 
relations  between  the  muscular  groups  and  manifestations 
of  feeling,  that  is  to  say,  the  portion  of  the  work  of  that 
great  and  misunderstood  man  which  contains  the  most 
genius.  What  can  be  said  of  medical  science  in  France 
during  the  last  twenty  years  ?  The  spirit  of  competition 
and  of  clique  has  destroyed  all  initiative  among  us.  But 
the  field  has  remained  clear  for  men  of  intrigue  and 
fools ;  a  good  many  more  stages  are  necessary  before  a 
reaction  can  be  produced.  Moreover  it  appears  that 
the  marvellous  labors  of  Pasteur,  which  in  the  beginning 
were  so  bold  and  broad,  are  about  to  be  wrecked  in  ofiti- 
cialdom,  and  scarcely  will  be  likely  to  have  continuers. 
You  are  not  wrong  in  believing  that  the  lines  of  demarka- 
tion  are  more  apparent  than  real  and  that  in  the  one,  as 
in  the  other,  progress  is  occasioned  by  independent 
minds  which  are  innovators  and  breakers  of  formulas. 

My  Father.  —  All  very  true ;  but  the  science  of  life 
of  which  we  were  speaking  might  march  on  with  giant 
strides,  thanks  to  the  multiplicity  of  its  points  of  view. 

The  work  might  be  divided  up.  As  to  that  which 
belongs  to  the  imagination,  those  who  are  earnest  in 
considering  abstract  ideas  might  look  upon  the  science 
under  that  aspect.  In  that  way  they  might  inaugurate 
that  Philosophy  of  Sensibility  from  which  you  expect 
marvellous  things,  and  which  in  any  case  would  lift  us 


224  Alp  house  Daudct. 

out  of  the  problems  of  the  Pure  Reason  to  some 
extent. 

Those  who  like  myself  are  zealous  servants  of  the 
"  concrete  "  would  occupy  themselves  less  with  imagina- 
tion in  itself  than  with  the  human  beings  who  show  it. 
Some  of  us  would  take  the  scientific  man.  Others  would 
study  poets.  But  examples,  many  examples  !  It  is 
through  examples  that  one  gets  lasting  results.  Con- 
sider Plutarch  and  Saint-Simon.  Those  who  are  fond 
of  monsters  will  study  the  changes  wrought  in  that  sub- 
lime faculty  which  constitutes  criminals  and  madmen. 

I.  —  When  it  comes  to  intellectual  enterprises,  have 
you  any  confidence  in  co-operative  labors?  I  would 
expect  that  more  should  result  from  the  efforts  of  a 
single  mind ;  a  book  for  instance  which  would  be  for 
Imagination  what  Taine's  book  was  for  Intelligence  —  a 
clear  and  a  correct  summary. 

My  Father.  —  I  think  the  task  would  be  very  heavy 
for  one  person.  If  you  wish  we  will  search  out  some  of 
the  principal  objects  of  such  a  work  and  trace  a  sort  of 
general  summary  in  big  lines. 

I.  —  Very  well ;  nothing  could  be  better  for  clearing 
up  one's  own  ideas  than  to  see  how  one  should  go  to 
work  to  explain  them  to  another  person. 

Let  us  begin  by  defining  Imagination,  and,  as  one 
describes  a  continent,  mark  off  its  boundaries,  its  rela- 
tions as  to  neighborhood  to  or  dependence  upon  other 
faculties. 

My  Father.  —  I  am  no  lover  of  definitions  at  the 
start.  Besides,  the  framework  of  gender  and  species  is 
very  narrow  for  that  voluminous  faculty ;  it  would  burst. 

I  think  it  might  be  well  at  the  start  to  lay  down  this 
chief  principle  :  that  Imagination  and  Se?isibility  are  two 


Appendix.  225 

connected  faculties,  or  else  that  Sensibility  is  the  reser- 
voir used  by  Imagination.  Just  now  we  sufficiently  laid 
stress  upon  that  point.  But  it  is  basic  and  it  will  at  once 
assure  originality  to  our  work. 

I.  —  That  having  been  done  and  with  examples  in 
support  (Balzac  and  Shakespeare  will  do  admirably  for 
our  demonstration)  we  can  establish  the  necessity  of 
considering  Imagination  from  two  points  of  view  .  .  . 

My  Father.  —  The  concrete  and  the  abstract:  ist  — 
Study  of  Imagination  among  individuals ;  2d  —  Study  of 
Imagination  in  itself. 

After  this  rapid  preamble  we  will  enter  at  once  into 
the  heart  of  the  subject  by  giving  a  few  portraits  of 
famous  representatives  of  Imagination.  Faithful  to  our 
method  of  using  examples,  we  will  take  a  poet,  a  scien- 
tist, a  philosopher,  an  artist  and  a  man  of  action.  Our 
chief  care  shall  be  to  demonstrate  that  this  faculty 
changes  with  the  innumerable  forms  of  life,  just  so  soon 
as  it  is  a  question  of  a  living  faculty.  We  are  seeking 
laws  and  truths,  but  we  shall  insist  on  the  differences  and 
the  exceptions.  That  method  will  reduce  error  to  a 
minimum  and  stifle  all  pedantry. 

It  shows  us  what  we  really  are,  poor  observers  in  a  blind 
way  and  by  no  means  arrogant  men  of  theory  hide- 
bound within  their  formulas  even  when  their  formulas 
are  false. 

For  the  poet  we  could  not  have  a  better  example  than 
Hugo  ;  and  for  sub-title  thereto  "  or  sensitiveness  to  the 
word  ;  "  as  a  sub-title  for  Lamartine  preferably  "■  or  sensi- 
tiveness to  the  rhythmic  period,"  and  that  for  Baudelaire 
"  or  sensitiveness  to  nicety."  Poor  Baudelaire  !  It  was 
that  long  research  for  the  exact  word  which  killed 
him. 

IS 


226  Alphonse  Daudef. 

As  to  Victor  Hugo,  if  we  compare  his  verbal  sensitive- 
ness to  sensitiveness  to  cold  and  heat  for  example,  we 
perceive  that  his  most  admirable  poems  are  veritable 
"shudders"  —  and  prophetic  shudders  besides.  In  the 
wear  and  tear  of  life,  through  rubbing  and  degeneration, 
most  words  have  become  vulgarized,  and  so  we  employ 
words  without  force  and  lacking  blood ;  they  are  mere 
ansemics.  Thanks  to  his  verbal  sensitiveness  Hugo  has 
given  all  their  energy,  all  their  reflected  gleams  back  to 
words.  This  kind  of  miracle  takes  place  with  him  par- 
ticularly through  the  placing  of  the  word  in  the  phrase. 
Just  as  jewellers  present  certain  jewels  at  the  most  lumi- 
nous point  and  after  such  a  fashion  that  they  shine  with 
an  unexpected  and  burning  brilliance,  so  does  he  present 
a  word.  In  his  hands  a  word  follows  its  unconventional 
role  just  as  the  butterfly  before  mentioned  followed  the 
stream  from  the  watering-cart ;  here  in  the  midst  of 
the  19th  century  he  gave  back  to  the  vocabulary  all  the 
burning  power  of  the  i6th  century,  whilst  the  terms 
used  in  a  new  way  shone  and  flamed  in  the  sunlight  of 
the  idea. 

I.  —  But  that  verbal  sensitiveness  is  a  precipice.  When 
Hugo  makes  an  error  he  errs  magnificently.  He  takes 
sonorous  sounds  for  arguments  and  alliterations  for 
proofs,  and  then  he  contents  himself  with  puns  pure 
and  simple.  This  happens  to  him  particularly  when  he 
assails  ideas  or  those  appearances  of  ideas  with  which 
lyrical  minds  proudly  play,  such  as  the  briefness  of  exist- 
ence, the  probability  that  there  is  a  superior  justice,  the 
difficulty  of  curing  oneself  of  love,  the  cruel  stress  of 
remorse,  the  delights  of  liberty  and  so  forth.  In  such 
commonplaces  as  these  Hugo's  mill  grinds  away  at 
nothing.     He  always  displaces  the  same  amount  of  air, 


Appendix.  227 

whether  his  subject  be  beautiful  or  vulgar,  so  that  his 
come-downs  are  simply  colossal. 

My  Father.  —  The  results  are  peculiar  enough  if  one 
compares  the  imagination  of  Hugo  with  that  of  Chateau- 
briand. In  the  latter  there  is  a  combination  of  verbal 
sensitiveness  and  sensitiveness  to  the  period.  Particu- 
larly does  he  excel  in  the  promptness  and  lightning-like 
brilliancy  of  his  descriptive  wholes  :  here  a  happy  and 
new  epithet  and  there  a  fine  noun,  dull  and  abstract,  or 
gleaming  with  a  low  color-note.  So  does  Chateau- 
briand enchant  us.  This  method  is  so  characteristic  of 
him  that  any  two  lines  from  his  works  are  at  once 
recognizable. 

It  seems  that  the  phrase  as  Chateaubriand  uses  it  has 
preserved  the  rhythm  and  movement  of  the  sea ;  the 
rush  of  his  crises  comes  from  the  farthest  line  of  the 
horizon  ;  their  return  is  broad,  quiet  and  majestic.  An- 
other example  of  sensitiveness  to  the  period  in  writing, 
Gustave  Flaubert,  is  the  only  one  presenting  in  the  same 
degree  as  Chateaubriand  that  verbal  wealth  which  gives 
a  sensuous  satisfaction  to  one's  mind  when  reading. 
But  it  is  Normandy  over  against  Brittany. 

I.  —  One  morning,  after  a  wearisome  night  in  the 
train,  how  well  did  I  feel  that  relationship  between 
Chateaubriand  and  his  sublime  source  of  inspiration,  the 
ocean  !  I  was  making  a  pilgrimage  to  the  crag  of  the 
Grand  B6.  All  the  horizon  of  Saint-Malo  was  powdered 
with  a  fine  and  penetrating  rain.  Gulls  were  wailing 
through  the  damp  air,  and  along  the  suburbs  of  the  city, 
those  crooked,  green  suburbs,  the  dnmis  of  the  military 
school  were  beating.  I  seated  myself  near  the  balus- 
trade which  guards  the  splendid  sepulchre  ;  of  a  cer- 
tainty that  glorious  horizon  excited  me  no  more  than  did 


228  Alp  house  Daudet. 

the  name  etched  in  the  stone.  But  it  caused  me  to 
understand  him  who  lay  beneath.  The  author  of  Rency 
the  bold  poet  perched  at  the  portal  of  the  19th  century 
like  an  eagle  on  his  crag,  he  at  least  had  the  rhythm  of 
the  high  sea.  As  in  the  big  sea-shells  that  were  about 
his  bedroom  as  a  child,  so  in  every  one  of  his  phrases 
that  humid  expanse  was  condensed,  that  expanse  where 
the  wailing  gulls  turned  and  twisted.  What  I  perceive 
hovering  above  his  literary  work  is  the  sky  of  the  ocean, 
heavy,  impenetrable  and  without  limits,  that  breeder  of 
fogs  and  misery,  that  risk-filled  sky  and  melancholy, 
which  is  ever  mustered  by  glances  of  disquiet.  Thus  did 
the  lighthouse  of  the  French  tongue  cast  its  rays  over 
our  wretched  epoch,  as  if  in  the  midst  of  the  waves 
where  they  tumble  in  a  majestic  tumult  underneath  the 
vast  gray  expanse.  One's  sensations  experience  an  un- 
expected grandeur  whilst  traversing  the  works  of  that 
man.  Rain,  wind,  forests  and  ocean,  or  by  way  of  con- 
trast the  grandeurs  and  miseries  of  human  beings,  unroll 
themselves  from  the  depths  of  his  brain  and  carve  pic- 
tures grandly  upon  the  live  rock  of  the  written  word. 
The  imagination  of  that  great  nomadic  bird  was  ever 
turned  toward  his  black  sun.  Death ;  it  was  the  thought 
of  death  which  filled  him  with  melancholy  and  a  disdain 
so  magnificent  that  the  world  was  darkened  thereby,  and 
with  a  bold  and  haughty  irony  which  dared  to  attack  yet 
another  glory,  the  glory  of  that  other  eagle  there  before 
him  :   Napoleon. 

Mv  Father.  —  Oh  magnificent  imagination  of  Brit- 
tany, imagination  opposed  to  that  of  my  race,  but  one 
that  I  passionately  admire  —  the  ocean,  the  North  and 
its  fogs  !  At  the  dawn  of  light  I  drank  ray  glass  of 
brandy  in  the  little  yellowish  house  and  then  I  embarked 


Appendix.  229 

on  the  pilot  boat  which  left  the  port  of  Quiberon,  and 
there  lay  the  soul  of  Brittany  all  about  me  .  .  .  {after  a 
moment^s  thought)  Chateaubriand,  Lamennais,  Renan 
are  the  most  splendid  revolutionists  of  the  century,  tre- 
mendous figures  carved  in  granite  upon  which  the  flying 
scud  of  glory  ever  beats  !  And  those  severe  images 
which  haunt  them  are  the  images  that  rose  from  their 
old,  black,  heroic  country  where  ocean  and  mankind 
forever  war  upon  each  other. 

I.  —  Should  we  not  note  here,  in  those  powerful 
minds,  the  extraordinary  impression  which  was  made  by 
the  images  which  they  perceived  all  about  them  during 
their  childhood  ?  Entering  into  their  brains  at  the  time 
when  brains  are  most  impressionable,  those  images 
became  an  integral  part  of  them  and  developed  as  they 
developed.  The  ocean,  sky,  forests  and  mountains, 
those  were  their  natural  outlooks,  those  the  horizons 
which  were  destined  never  to  be  forgotten.  They  must 
have  been  insinuated  into  them  through  the  slow  atten- 
tion given  them  in  childhood,  or  else  during  those 
moments  of  excited  feeling  which  constitute  the  deeper 
life  of  a  person.  This  cloud  or  that  shade  in  the  water, 
or  yonder  shape  of  tree,  river  or  plain,  were  the  phan- 
toms which  haunted  them  and  gave  to  their  work  that 
majesty,  that  sombre  glory  which  belong  only  to  nature 
and  to  them.  Guardians  of  the  sublime  secrets  which 
the  natural  world  whispers  to  the  child,  when  they 
became  men  they  preserved  in  themselves  the  eternal 
majesty  of  space. 

Thus  the  words  of  Chateaubriand  give  us  glimpses  of 
horizons  which  move  us  deeply.  Thus  Victor  Hugo  has 
a  part  in  the  rose-colored  morning,  feels  the  heavy  heats 
of  noonday  and  falls  asleep  in  the  golden  edge  of  twi- 


230  Alp  house  Daudet. 

light.  That  which  their  Uttle  eyes  looked  upon  during 
the  fevers  and  transports  of  their  years  of  growth,  grew 
grander  with  increasing  age.  Images  conjure  up 
images.  At  first  appeared  athwart  the  vague  whirlwinds 
of  memory  that  rose-tinged  shore  where  shadows  fall. 
Thereafter  came  the  melancholy  of  that  moment,  and 
the  sensation  which  is  grafted  upon  it,  as  when  at  the 
barking  of  the  shepherd's  dog  the  staggering  sheep 
creep  close  together  in  a  flock.  And  the  sensations  of 
early  manhood  made  those  pictures  only  more  vivid. 
When  love  appeared  in  the  burning  heart  of  the  famous 
one,  it  called  at  first  upon  all  the  living  forces  of  early 
youth,  the  gladsome  awakenings  and  the  days  burning 
with  unconscious  desires.  Since  love  renders  everything 
more  beautiful  and  rich,  it  causes  the  memory  to  pour 
forth  a  multitude  of  keen  and  brilliant  sensations,  which 
furnish  food  to  prose  or  poetry. 

A  young  girl  singing  as  she  turns  her  spinning-wheel 
—  that  to  the  mind  of  Goethe  is  the  most  lively  image  of 
chastity  and  grace.  It  is  an  image  which  returns  many 
a  time  in  his  works.  If  it  is  Clara  waiting  for  Egmont, 
or  Margaret  waiting  for  Faust,  that  purring  of  the 
spinning-wheel  gives  the  cadence  for  the  amorous 
attempt.  I  have  always  imagined  that  when  he  was  a 
child  Goethe  had  that  spectacle  before  him.  If  one 
should  make  a  selection  in  their  literary  work  from  the 
early  years  of  the  greatest  poets  of  those  parts  which 
relate  to  imagination,  I  am  sure  that  the  part  such 
things  play  would  astonish  people.  It  would  astonish 
them  because  we  forget  the  extreme  vividness  of  first 
sensations  ;  but  although  they  are  benumbed  they  remain 
living  even  in  the  most  ordinary  men.  And  some- 
times they  come  of  a  sudden,  returning  to  inspire  old 


Appendix.  231 

age  with  joy  or  sorrow  at  the  sight  of  long- forgotten  faces 
indistinct  of  feature. 

My  Father.  —  In  the  case  of  those  whom  genius  has 
touched  with  its  wing,  such  sensations  afford  a  constant 
happiness.  Look  at  any  one  of  them  —  Goethe,  Hugo, 
Chateaubriand,  Renan  —  how  they  turn  their  heads  back- 
ward with  a  melancholy  smile  !  See  them  bending  over 
their  own  cradle.  But  in  the  most  secret  part  of  their 
souls  there  are  regions  which  have  never  been  explored, 
whence  their  singular  dreams  mount  up.  Whatever 
their  little  hands  have  touched,  whatever  their  young 
eyes  have  seen,  haunts  them  thereafter,  and  haunts  us. 
Their  finest  pages  are  gemmed  with  the  dews  of  youth. 

Besides,  imagination  likes  to  explore  the  regions  of 
the  unconscious.  It  plunges  into  the  black  depths  of  our 
soul  and  brings  forth  those  miraculous  dreams,  that 
which  touched  and  tempted  us,  and  especially  that  which 
troubled  us  when  we  were  making  trial  of  our  own 
senses  and  were  acquainted  with  but  few  of  the  forms 
of  the  vast  world. 

I.  —  The  first  time  that  I  turned  the  leaves  of  Hoku- 
sai's  Mangoua,  those  extraordinary  albums  where  the 
genius  of  the  most  impressionable  of  all  draftsmen  has 
tried  its  flight,  I  felt  an  intuition  of  the  meaning  of 
such  wandering  forms.  Goethe  said  that  our  imagina- 
tion was  not  able  to  trace  a  single  line  or  appearance 
which  did  not  previously  exist  in  a  real  and  possible 
state  of  existence.  It  might  really  seem  as  if  Hokusai 
had  found  in  his  own  soul  quite  as  much  as  in  the 
enormous  reservoir  furnished  by  nature  that  sensational 
crowd  of  trees,  unknown  animals,  attitudes,  movements 
and  objects  of  which  he  delivered  himself  by  means 
of  his   drawings.     Exactly  as  Balzac    and    Shakespeare 


232  Alphonse  Daudet. 

did,  so  this  powerful  artist  traced  on  paper,  not  mere 
copies  of  the  external  world,  but  a  series  of  figures  pro- 
jected from  his  own  brain.  When  he  talks  to  us  about 
his  dreams,  and  when  he  puts  his  wits  to  work  tracing 
them  —  and  doing  it  with  what  vigor  and  relief !  —  we 
must  understand  by  that  that  he  dreamed  Nature. 

My  Father.  —  But  is  n't  that  exactly  what  children 
do?  All  the  time  that  the  world  is  blooming  about 
them  and  offers  itself  to  the  delicate  tentacles  of  their 
senses,  a  parallel  world  is  boiling  within  them,  a  world 
over  which  they  have  in  no  sense  the  mastery.  The 
meeting  of  these  two  circuits,  their  combination  or 
mulatiere  creates  their  originality  as  geniuses. 

And  then  whatever  the  imagination  of  the  child  has 
taken  hold  of,  just  as  it  is  with  the  imagination  of  the 
artist,  is  in  a  state  of  constant  movement.  The  child 
and  the  man  of  genius  see  things  that  have  no  motion 
move  about.  They  are  struck  by  accordances  and  anal- 
ogies, they  perceive  that  closely  woven  web  in  nature 
where  everything  has  its  place  and  each  thing  accords 
one  with  the  other  and  where  the  reverse  of  the  weft 
itself  has  no  deception  in  it.  Because  the  reverse  con- 
sists of  the  science  and  order  with  which  the  threads 
cross  each  other,  whensoever  the  face  of  the  tapestry 
itself  consists  of  art  and  beauty.  When  Albert  Diirer 
places  side  by  side  a  mass  of  hair  and  a  falling  stream  of 
water,  he  knits  the  world  together  like  a  child  by  the 
employment  of  such  exterior  resemblances. 

Such  reflections  have  carried  us  aside  from  the  poets, 
but  it  is  right  to  vagabondize  a  bit  when  one  is  occupied 
with  a  wandering  faculty.  Particularly  in  our  century 
have  there  been  poetic  and  literary  imaginations  of  a 
very  strange  sort  which  would  fit  well  in  our  museum ; 


Appendix.  233 

among  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  Germans  still  more 
than  among  us,  I  think,  because  the  images  in  the 
North,  troubled  and  numberless  as  they  are,  growing 
one  from  the  other,  are  very  different  from  the  images  in 
the  South,  among  which  lucidness  is  never  wanting. 
This  is  demanded  by  the  Latin  law. 

I.  —  The  inheritance  of  the  Aryans  has  been  divided 
between  two  great  captains.  I  acknowledge  that  here- 
tofore I  have  accused  you  of  exaggeration  when  I  saw 
you  giving  so  much  importance  to  questions  of  race  ;  but 
to-day,  since  my  education  has  broadened,  I  see  very 
well  that  you  are  right.  As  it  always  happens,  great 
causes  determine  great  effects,  and  a  theory  of  litde 
causes  —  the  theory  of  Cleopatra's  nose  —  is  a  mystifi- 
cation, for  many  other  motives  would  have  been  neces- 
sary beside  the  paradox  Pascal  has  offered,  before  the 
whole  face  of  history  could  have  been  changed. 

It  is  by  studying  the  writers,  poets  and  artists  in  gen- 
eral that  one  understands  best  the  influence  upon  the 
imagination  of  latitude.  In  the  North  images  are 
tumultuous,  heavy  and  filled  with  germs  of  fermenta- 
tion. Of  course  one  should  avoid  too  easy  analogies, 
but  the  Valkyrs  of  god  Woden  who  fill  every  point  of 
the  compass  with  their  furious  galloping  are  in  good 
sooth  the  daughters  of  the  mists.  Just  to  quote  a  poet 
haphazard  —  the  distance  between  the  poems  of  Robert 
Browning  and  those  of  Fr^d^ric  Mistral,  that  is  pretty 
much  the  difference. 

My  Father.  —  Beyond  everything  else  the  Southern 
imagination  is  violent  and  rapid ;  but  in  its  greatest 
frenzy  it  keeps  in  touch  with  reason  and  holds  solidly 
thereto.  Its  lucidness  is  sometimes  more  apparent 
than  real.     There  are  cool  springs  whose  limpid  waters 


234  Alp  house  Daudet. 

mask  their  depth.  In  any  case  it  never  becomes  intoxi- 
cated with  itself.  There  is  nothing  of  the  somnam- 
buHst,  nothing  of  the  artificial  in  it.  It  remains  always 
sticking  close  to  life.  Sometimes  writers  of  a  Southern 
race  have  attempted  to  tear  themselves  away  from  their 
natural  temperament  in  order  to  be  misty,  abstruse  and 
symbolical.  But  there  comes  their  Latin  clarity  to 
bridle  them,  envelop  and  restrain  them,  forcing  them 
to  remain  within  the  limits  of  the  comprehensible,  no 
matter  what  they  may  desire  !  These  contortions  amuse 
me.  Unquestionably  the  hypothesis  of  limpid  horizons 
which  oblige  the  imagination  to  stay  ever  transparent 
and  direct  seems  commonplace.  But  is  it  not  a  right 
hypothesis  and  one  not  to  be  gainsaid? 

But  apart  from  questions  of  race,  and  on  parallel  lines 
with  them,  what  is  more  amusing  and  side-splitting  than 
the  case  of  Nepomuc^ne  Lemercier,  the  author  of  the 
Panhypocrisiade  ?  Certainly  he  was  a  man  of  imagina- 
tion, but  of  Latin  imagination.  And  the  more  the 
wretched  fellow  tried  to  escape  from  clearness  and  the 
basic  qualities  of  his  own  intelligence,  the  more  did 
the  tapes  of  commonsense  bind  him  down  and  make  him 
impossible  for  any  artistic  diversions.  He  was  strange, 
it  is  true,  but  his  strangeness  was  classic,  obedient 
to  rules  and  regulations,  forced  into  an  extraordinary 
mold. 

The  imagination  of  the  North,  and  I  beg  you  to 
understand  that  there  is  no  fault-finding  in  my  words, 
is  on  the  contrary  in  its  essential  nature  complex. 
Without  question  it  would  have  been  impossible  for 
Carlyle,  as  well  as  Browning,  or  Jean-Paul  Richter,  or 
Walt  Whitman,  to  express  himself  in  a  transparent 
fashion.      Those    subterranean   analogies   of  which   we 


Appendix  >  235 

spoke  just  now,  that  obscure  network  of  the  universe  pos- 
sessed them  to  the  point  of  madness.  The  beauties  in 
their  works  are  like  torches  waved  with  tremendous 
power   in    the   blackest   shade. 

Carlyle's  explanations,  like  those  made  by  Jean -Paul, 
only  make  the  blackness  blacker.  These  men  move 
with  ease  in  a  mysterious  land.  Similar  sounds,  words 
and  formulas  that  seem  to  clash,  analogies  and  allitera- 
tions take  on  a  sibylline  aspect  in  their  style  and  are  the 
source  of  perpetual  dreams. 

I.  —  But,  as  a  Latin,  do  you  not  feel  a  sort  of  repul- 
sion or  compulsory  shrinking  from  such  masses  of  sym- 
bols and  from  those  precious  stones  in  which  truths  and 
enigmas  of  color  are  as  it  were  in  suspension? 

My  Father.  —  I  have  moments  when  those  troublous 
images  seduce  me  too.  I  understand  marvellously  well 
how  a  certain  class  of  minds  should  delight  in  them  and 
refuse  every  other  nourishment.  They  render  one's 
palate  blase,  and  everything  else  seems  tasteless.  I 
only  find  fault  with  the  fact  that  obscurity  often  only 
covers  some  matter  of  very  little  importance  which 
would  not  attract  attention  if  it  were  transposed  into 
simple  terms.  When  a  whirlwind  of  ideas  and  impres- 
sions falls  upon  poets,  it  is  allowable  in  them  to  translate 
those  ideas  and  impressions  in  that  sequence  under 
which  they  present  themselves,  lucky  enough  to  be  able 
to  fix  the  mystery  thus  forever.  What  is  to  be  objected 
to  very  strongly  is  the  habit  of  intentionally  obscuring 
one's  language. 

But  for  a  Northern  imagination  there  are  plenty  of 
ways  of  being  cloudy  and  yet  sincere.  Now  it  is  an 
analogy,  or  all  the  glittering  following  of  some  word  or 
some  thought,  which  carries  away  pen  and  mind.     Again 


236  Alphonse  Daudet. 

it  is  a  poet  like  Swinburne  for  example,  who  digs  down 
until  he  arrives  at  black  and  unexplored  regions  where 
his  own  little  smoky  lamp  alone  can  guide  him.  In  one 
case  lyrical  impressions  present  themselves  to  the  mind 
with  a  tremendous  tumult  and  a  rising  of  the  mists 
which  he  who  translates  them  respects.  In  another 
case  extreme  brevity  and  a  praiseworthy  attempt  to 
make  a  formula  precise  and  rare  bring  together  words  of 
a  narrow  and  hard  meaning,  which  one  finds  great  diffi- 
culty in  breaking  up. 

Lovers  of  the  shadowy  are  right  in  alleging  that  we 
are  surrounded  with  mystery,  or,  to  use  the  charming 
excuse  made  by  St^phane  Mallarm^,  that  one  has  to 
write  with  black  on  a  white  ground.  But  is  there  not  a 
primordial  convention  without  which  a  work  of  art 
would  become  impossible,  according  to  which  one  must 
believe  oneself  in  possession  of  a  certain  stability  and 
light,  certain  laws  in  whose  shelter  the  book,  drama  or 
painting  flourish,  before  one  attempts  to  tell  the  story, 
paint  the  picture,  or  make  oneself  manifest  in  any  man- 
ner whatsoever?  That  which  causes  obscurity  in  some 
people  is  the  fact  that  they  make  everything  uncertain 
in  their  first  sentence ;  after  that  they  move  along  in  an 
artificial  and  terribly  complex  world,  in  which  words 
have  an  unexpected  meaning  and  sonorous  sounds  at- 
tract or  repel  each  other  and  everything  happens  just 
as  it  does  in  dreams  where  no  will  acts  as  guide  to 
appearances  and  acts  and  everything  floats  in  a  sea  of 
the  inexplicable. 

I.  —  By  way  of  the  names  of  Hokusa'i  and  Albert 
Diirer  we  have  reached  the  question  of  Imagination 
among  draftsmen  and  painters.  There  are  two  fields  of 
feeling  here  quite  distinct  one  from  the  other,  that  of 


Appendix.  237 

line  and  that  of  color — Leonardo  da  Vinci  and  Rem- 
brandt for  example. 

My  Father.  —  One  primary  and  important  observa- 
tion —  the  duel  between  light  and  color,  to  which  in  his 
Italian  Painting  as  well  as  in  his  Flemish  Painting 
Taine  seems  to  me  to  have  failed  to  give  enough  atten- 
tion. The  antagonism  there  is  a  real  one.  The  most 
vivid  image  of  this  question,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned, 
consisted  of  a  flower  from  Spain  which  happened  to  be 
placed  in  the  yard  of  that  little  house  formerly  occupied 
by  Eugene  Delacroix,  which  we  were  then  occupying. 
When  evening  came  and  the  sun  gradually  died  out  that 
flower  and  shrub  flamed  like  the  host  above  the  altar. 

I.  —  That  remark  receives  confirmation  through  a 
visit  I  made  to  a  certain  great  museum  in  the  North, 
that  of  Amsterdam.  The  Rembrandts,  the  Halses,  the 
Terburgs,  the  Vermeers  of  Delft  have  been  the  real  kings 
of  color.  A  low  and  gray  sky,  or  else  some  snow-filled 
heaven  corresponds  especially  well  with  the  delightful 
shades  of  color  in  houses  and  canals  in  their  country. 
In  such  circumstances  colors  spring  forth  with  a  most 
extraordinary  violence.  One  can  believe  that  in  a  cer- 
tain way  they  have  forced  the  eyes  of  painters  and 
aided  in  the  form.ation  of  the  earliest  pioneers  among 
the  realists. 

As  to  the  imagination,  it  exists  there  in  details,  exact- 
itude and  intensity.  Rembrandt  imagined  a  special 
world  of  his  own,  containing  a  warm  and  sumptuous 
atmosphere  in  which  a  shadow  has  the  soft  heaviness  of 
velvet;  with  him  faces  and  bodies  are  always  placed 
just  at  the  intersection  of  this  light  and  this  shade,  in 
such  case  that  they  off"er  an  alternation  of  gold  and  dark 
red  and  shadows. 


238  Alphonse  Daudet. 

However  dangerous  and  deceiving  parallels  may  be, 
it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  those  were  wrong  who  com- 
pared the  imagination  of  Rembrandt  to  the  imagination 
of  Shakespeare.  Just  like  the  Dutch  painter,  the  Eng- 
lish playwright  has  an  atmosphere  entirely  his  own, 
which  is  like  some  emanation  from  his  genius ;  and  his 
characters  play  alternately  from  a  golden  richness  to  a 
deep  black,  which  causes  them  to  approach  those  un- 
forgettable captains  of  the  "  Ronde  de  Nuit  '■*  and  those 
stupefying  "  Drapiers."  Virtues  and  vices,  kindnesses 
and  brutality,  dreams  and  acts,  perform  in  his  case  the 
duties  of  light  and  shade. 

Another  series  of  reflections  came  to  me,  but  always 
with  regard  to  Rembrandt,  when  I  made  a  visit  to  the 
museum  at  Madrid  and  mentally  compared  the  marvels 
there  with  the  marvels  in  the  Amsterdam  Museum.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  the  imagination  of  Velasquez  and 
Rembrandt  differed  radically  and  completely  from  each 
other.  That  shows  itself  in  the  different  way  each  had 
of  arranging  their  masterpiece.  Just  go  up  to  the  por- 
trait of  his  mother  by  the  Dutch  master  and  see  if  you 
can  find  any  traces  of  work  or  excitement  or  vibration 
of  the  brush.  No  effort,  no  suggestion  of  subjectivity, 
if  one  may  use  pedantic  language,  is  to  be  seen.  The 
painter  has  reproduced  life  in  its  full  relief  and  warmth, 
but  he  has  remained  impersonal,  and  that  life  which  he 
has  depicted  is  covered  with  a  glaze  under  which  the 
traces  of  labor  are  no  longer  visible. 

On  the  contrary,  walk  up  to  the  "  Fileuses  "  by  Velas- 
quez ;  whatever  of  carefully  directed  brutality,  subtle 
vehemence  and  restrained  audacity  show  themselves  to 
the  observer  through  the  furious  play  of  the  brush,  the 
frenzied  spread  of  the  impasto,  the  sudden  jets  of  gray, 


Appendix.  239 

rose  and  black  —  those  burning  and  dead  colors  the  secret 
of  which  he  carried  off  with  him  —  whatever  of  such 
things  the  brain  of  a  man  of  genius  can  contain,  spring 
to  the  sight.  In  the  presence  of  that  magnificent  "  go  " 
a  kind  of  hallucination  befalls  one.  The  artist  seems 
to  be  caught  at  work.  One  seems  to  see  him  painting 
a  hand  which  moves,  painting  it  in  five  strokes  of  the 
brush,  or  bringing  out  an  embroidery  by  a  few  scratches 
of  his  palette  knife,  or  inclosing  in  a  pearl  the  reflection 
of  some  figure,  or  in  some  figure  the  reflection  of  a  race. 

Are  there  not  two  distinct  forms  there  clearly  and  de- 
cisively apart —  are  there  not  two  opposing  inspirations 
there  ?  When  Rembrandt  had  finished  that  portrait  of 
his  mother,  Rembrandt  had  disappeared.  But  in  the 
canvas  of  the  "  Fileuses  "  Velasquez  is  always  there. 
He  shows  the  secrets  of  his  method  and  seems  to  defy 
those  who  are  to  follow  him. 

My  Father.  —  According  to  that,  his  imagination 
would  be  nearer  of  a  kind  to  Frans  Hals,  whose  tremen- 
dous "  go  "  is  equally  plain.  I  recall  a  dining  room 
entirely  hung  with  panels  by  this  master.  It  was  life 
itself. 

I.  —  Ah  that  little  museum  of  Haarlem  opposite  the 
church  on  the  little  provincial  square  !  Seated  about  a 
table  at  some  excuse  for  a  meeting  of  an  archery  club 
are  all  the  varieties  of  human  sensuality,  bold  and  mani- 
fest in  their  several  types.  There  's  representative  ima- 
gination pushed  to  the  point  of  paroxysm  !  The  timid 
man,  the  arrogant,  the  savage,  and  the  man  who  is 
conciliatory,  and  the  man  who  hates  his  neighbor  in 
secret  ! 

The  old  regents  of  the  club  near  by  with  their  wrinkled 
faces  and  trembUng    hands  signify  the    decay  of    the 


24P  Alphonse  Daudet. 

human  body,  the  slow  usage  and  decline  of  life.  One  of 
them  exceptionally  has  an  unctuous  and  waxen  face 
with  a  veritable  patina  on  it  which  makes  it  look  like 
old  ivory,  Frans  Hals  more  than  any  other  artist  has 
proved  that  it  is  possible  to  be  symbolical  by  giving  an 
exact  representation  of  reality. 

My  Father.  —  I  am  thinking  of  another  painter,  this 
time  a  Spaniard,  but  one  who  had  an  extraordinary 
sensitiveness  for  cruelty  and  pain,  and  was  possessed 
with  an  overwhelming  imagination  .  .  .  Goya.  All  the 
while  that  he  spends  his  wit  on  bull  fights  and  fills  the 
black  shadows  with  figures  of  enthusiastic  spectators, 
whilst  the  principal  actor,  squat  and  black,  while  the 
beast  hurls  itself  ahead,  while  the  fatal  trumpets  blow  — 
all  the  time  that  he  carves  with  his  pitiless  and  savage 
burin  the  "  Horrors  of  War,"  bloody  scenes  from  the 
Inquisition,  monks  with  mouths  distended  by  a  holy 
ferocity  —  all  the  while  that  he  trifles  with  the  elegancies, 
caprices  and  perverted  smiles  of  little  rosy  faces,  he 
remains  anguished  and  cruel  through  the  force  of  reality, 
and  even  through  the  force  of  color,  which  runs  through 
all  the  shades  of  blood  whether  dry  or  fluid,  in  jets  or 
sheets  or  blotches.     He  represents  a  barbarous  epoch. 

I.  —  If  we  leave  to  one  side  the  technical  imagination 
of  painters  in  so  far  as  it  touches  drawing  and  color,  the 
other  portion  of  their  minds  seems  for  the  most  part  to 
be  somewhat  akin  to  the  dramatic  art.  But  according 
to  my  idea  Rembrandt  and  Velasquez  are  not  in  their 
moved  and  decorative  pictures  at  the  best  of  their  genius. 
Marvellously  do  they  render  the  perpetual  static  drama 
of  existence,  that  namely  which  lurks  in  a  smile,  a  finely 
twisted  mouth,  a  gesture,  or  even  for  example  some 
window  through  which  we  see  an  interior,  a  garden,  a 


Appendix.  24 1 

knot  of  people  assembled,  or  else  a  single  person,  a 
clown,  a  court  jester,  a  philosopher,  or  in  a  princess  or 
in  a  horse.  There  is  a  general  theory  spread  among 
men  of  the  profession  that  painting  should  not  express 
ideas.  Rather  does  it  seem  that  painting  should  express 
ideas  after  its  own  fashion ;  the  imagination  of  great 
painters  can  be  just  as  rich  and  excited  as  those  of  great 
playwrights.  Painting  has  the  advantage  of  restoring 
for  us  the  speechless,  motionless  and  intervening  part  of 
the  drama  or  irony  of  life,  that  part,  namely,  which  the 
drama  can  legitimately  make  real  because  it  is  always  in 
movement  and  sounding.  But  at  certain  moments  the 
arts  approach  each  other  and  merge  one  into  the  other. 
That  is  why  the  plays  of  Ibsen,  with  their  characters  who 
keep  silence  for  long  moments  and  are  so  preoccupied 
with  looks  and  the  fleeting  aspect  of  things  and  with 
their  own  changelessness,  are  not  entirely  without  con- 
nection with  the  pictures  of  the  great  Holland  epoch, 
for  the  latter  are  an  apotheosis  of  intimate  and  interior 
life  —  among  which  some  lives  indeed  include  so  large  a 
proportion  of  the  tragical ! 

The  imagination  excites  itself  most  vividly  when  it 
receives  very  little  material,  but  that  material  sincere  and 
arranged  in  proper  order.  In  all  the  modern  theatre 
is  there  a  single  scene  more  impressive  than  that 
assemblage  of  merchants,  than  that  council  of  regents 
about  a  table?  What  are  they  at?  We  do  not  know 
what  it  is  that  these  men  with  heads  like  cats,  these  old 
men  with  weasel  heads  are  discussing.  What  moves  us 
is  the  expression  of  their  faces.  Notwithstanding  their 
speechlessness,  a  flood  of  profound  utterance,  a  dialogue 
in  Shakespeare's  manner  seems  to  us  to  flow  from  those 
mouths  with  thin  and  yet  ruddy  lips. 

16 


242  Alp  house  Daudet. 

My  Father.  —  Ambulatory  life  shows  us  a  similar 
dramatic  side  in  the  swiftly  passing  spectacles  of  the 
street  or  the  fields.  An  old  man  reading  at  a  window 
or  a  balcony,  an  old  woman  grafting  her  rose  bushes,  a 
young  man  and  young  girl  seated  at  twilight  on  a  ter- 
race, a  peasant  in  his  field  —  all  these  human  beings 
bowed  down  by  the  monotony  of  their  life  are  so  many 
interior  images  whose  leaves  we  turn  in  our  reveries. 
Without  willing  it  we  create  concerning  and  about  them 
little  stories.  We  fabricate  the  circumstances ;  and  I 
believe  that  artists  can  never  be  too  rich  in  visions  of  this 
sort.  These  guide  artists  toward  truth  of  rendering, 
right  slant  of  the  light,  the  expression  of  faces,  char- 
acteristic attitudes,  calm  gestures  and  looks  ;  the  bringing 
together  of  all  these  elements  brings  beauty  into  life. 
For  my  part  I  have  never  ceased  feeding  my  imagina- 
tion with  such  spectacles.  Many  of  them  have  re- 
mained so  vivid  in  my  memory  that  I  no  longer  know 
whether  they  belong  to  art  or  life. 

I.  —  Dutch  painting  makes  me  think  of  one  of  the  most 
singular  phenomena  of  the  history  of  art  and  therefore  of 
imagination.  There  are  epochs  in  which  minds  are  exer- 
cised in  favor  of  painting,  as  in  the  seventeenth  century  in 
Holland,  or  for  the  dramatic  art,  as  in  the  sixteenth  century 
in  England  and  in  Spain,  and  in  the  seventeenth  century 
in  France.  All  of  a  sudden  we  are  face  to  face  with  a 
simultaneous  blossoming  out  of  very  dissimilar  geniuses, 
but  all  of  them  abounding  in  power,  all  marked  by  love 
of  life  and  forms,  all  observers  of  windoivs.  That  may 
last  twenty,  thirty  or  forty  years,  and  one  masterpiece 
follows  another ;  art  passes  on  with  giant  strides,  refines 
itself  here  and  excites  itself  there  and  shines  with  in- 
comparable splendor.    Then  all  of  a  sudden  an  unknown 


Appendix.  243 

hand  takes  away  the  torches.  Queen  Mab  flies  with  her 
little  laugh.  The  shadows  darken  down.  Feeling  for 
life  is  lost.  Behold  the  reign  of  flat  works,  of  allegories 
and  imitations !  After  Rembrandt  comes  Lairesse. 
After  Racine,  behold  Voltaire !  How  explain  such 
changes  as  these? 

My  Father.  —  Enough  to  state  them.  In  the  most 
gifted  man  sensitiveness  is  not  forever.  In  an  artist 
those  wretched  hours  "  without  grace  "  as  I  call  them, 
are  very  frequent,  and  to  be  compared  to  that  dryness  of 
soul  feared  by  theologians.  Do  not  the  physiologists 
demonstrate  that  there  exists  a  periodic  insensibility  of  the 
heart!  It  is  to  be  noted  that  such  phases  follow 
periods  of  excitement,  periods  of  those  intoxicated 
moments  when  nature  gives  up  her  secrets.  What  takes 
place  in  the  individual  is  doubtless  repeated  by  the  race. 
Imaginations  have  need  of  periods  of  silence  and  rest. 
Then  it  is  that  the  torch  of  Lucretius  falls  by  the  way. 

I.  —  There  is  one  art  which  has  been  silent  a  long 
while,  yet  is  the  most  impressive  of  all,  since  it  consists 
of  history  fixed  in  place,  I  mean  architecture.  You 
know  the  saying  :  stones  no  longer  speak.  Who  will  ever 
explain  to  us  why  at  a  certain  given  period  the  soil  of 
Europe  began  to  bristle  with  a  harvest  of  churches 
which  raised  the  voice  of  faith  toward  the  sky?  Out- 
side the  pale  of  religion  there  were  always  palaces  and 
magnificent  buildings  and  even  most  curious  dwellings  of 
citizens.  All  that  is  gone.  In  some  unknown  city  a 
haphazard  stroll  by  twilight,  which  mercifully  softens  the 
actual  ugliness  of  the  scene,  permits  us  to  divine  the  old 
lyrical  beauties  of  architecture  like  gray,  antique  lace ; 
but,  for  our  contemporaries,  there  's  a  sense  dead  and 
gone  ! 


244  Alphonse  Daudet. 

My  Father.  —  That  is  not  true  for  music  at  least.  .  .  . 
Wagner  was  a  phenomenon  in  this  century  just  as  he 
will  be  one  in  the  time  to  come,  and  no  one  is  more 
fruitful  than  he  in  remarks  of  every  sort. 

He  was  a  man  belonging  to  another  age.  Neverthe- 
less he  found  a  way  to  our  nerves  and  our  brains  far 
more  easily  than  one  would  have  thought.  If  imagina- 
tion has  representatives  he  was  one  of  the  giants.  A 
Northern  imagination,  it  is  true,  on  which  all  the  beauties 
and  faults  of  the  North  have  left  their  impress.  He 
insists,  he  insists  with  violence  and  tenacity,  he  insists  so 
pitilessly  !  He  is  afraid  that  we  have  n't  understood. 
That  language  of  motives  which  he  has  imagined  and  of 
which  he  makes  such  a  magnificent  use  has  the  fault  of 
leaving  us  very  often  with  an  impression  of  weariness 
and  satiety.  It  becomes  a  veritable  cause  for  suffering 
in  the  case  of  his  many  and  odious  imitators,  because 
nothing  is  so  terrible  as  ideas  imposed  by  another,  noth- 
ing is  worse  than  routine. 

Still,  it  was  absolutely  necessary  for  him  to  invent  that 
system  of  motives  in  order  to  utter  that  connection  be- 
tween the  drama  and  music  realized  by  him,  a  connec- 
tion so  perfect  that  his  characters  seem  to  us  clothed  in 
sound.  Besides,  these  motives  ally  them  in  an  irresist- 
ible way,  sometimes  a  happy  way,  with  the  grand  cir- 
cumstances of  life  and  their  destiny.  And  finally  they 
express  those  mysterious  things  which  remain  unex- 
pressed but  understood  in  the  libretto. 

In  Richard  Wagner  the  imagination  is  so  representa- 
tive and  violent  that  it  saturates  his  work  to  overflowing 
with  all  the  sounds  of  nature  and  leaves  a  limited  space 
for  the  episodes.  The  passion  between  Tristan  and 
Isolde  plunges  into  the  tumult  of  the  ocean  which  over- 


Appendix.  245 

whelms  it,  then  it  appears  on  the  surface,  then  it 
plunges  under  again.  One  invincible  power  raises  the 
waves  and  the  souls  by  a  single  movement.  In  the 
poem  of  Wagner,  water,  fire,  the  woods,  the  blossoming 
and  mystic  meadow,  the  holy  spot  become  the  more 
powerful  characters.  In  this  paganism  of  to-day  all 
nature  has  become  divine. 

Your  generation  is  accustomed  to  these  splendors,  this 
torrent  of  heroism  and  life,  but  you  cannot  present  to 
your  fancy  the  impression  which  that  music  exercised 
on  men  of  my  age.  In  cold  truth  it  transformed  us.  It 
renovated  the  atmosphere  of  art.  Then  it  was  that  I 
understood  the  vanity  of  all  those  discussions  concerning 
realism,  lyricism  and  symbolism.  There  is  everything  in 
Wagner,  and  in  everything  he  is  admirable,  because 
there  is  nothing  in  him  which  is  pedantic  or  intention- 
ally low.  Turning  his  face  toward  Gayety  he  wrote  the 
Meistersinger,  turning  toward  Pain,  Love,  Death,  the 
Mutter  of  Goethe,  he  wrote  Tristan  tmd  Isolde. 
He  made  use  of  the  entire  human  piano-forte,  and 
the  entire  superhuman  piano-forte.  Cries,  tears,  the 
distortion  of  despair,  the  trickling  of  water  over  rocks, 
the  sough  of  the  wind  in  the  trees,  the  frightful  remorse 
for  incest,  the  song  of  the  shepherd  and  the  trumpets  of 
war  —  his  tremendous  imagination  is  always  at  white 
heat,  and  always  ready. 

That  imagination  of  his,  excessive  and  feverish,  has 
not  only  renovated  music  but  has  also  overwhelmed 
poetry  and  philosophy.  Although  theories  disquiet  me, 
still  I  feel  them  trembling  in  Wagner  behind  each  one 
of  his  heroes.  The  gods  talk  of  their  destiny  and  of  the 
conflict  of  that  destiny  with  the  destiny  of  men,  they 
talk  of  ancient  Fate  in  a  way  that  is  sometimes  obscure, 


246  Alphonse  Daudet, 

but  with  a  rush  and  go  that  make  one  forget  to  question 
them.  It  is  the  famous  wall  of  the  Legende  des 
Siecles,  crowded  with  tubas  and  the  trumpets  of  Sachs,' 
tumultuous  and  glittering  in  their  mass. 

I,  —  Do  you  think  it  would  be  possible  to  analyze  the 
imagination  of  a  man  of  that  sort? 

My  Father.  —  Everything  can  be  analyzed,  but  it 
would  be  a  pity  to  take  the  divinity  down  from  a 
pedestal.  Let  his  methods  remain  in  the  dark  like  his 
orchestra ;  his  sensitiveness,  which  was  one  of  a  special 
kind,  seems  to  me  before  everything  else  legendary.  It 
is  quite  possible  that  he  desired  to  have  characters  of  a 
size  suitable  to  their  surroundings,  and  that  one  would 
feel  uncomfortable  while  considering  ordinary  men  who 
should  be  victims  to  the  Ocean  of  Tristan,  or  to  the 
Forest  of  Siegfried.  What  difference  does  it  make  ? 
He  succeeds  in  moving  us  with  these  superterrestrial 
passions.  In  Tristan  humanity  has  a  larger  part. 
Those  are  our  own  wounds  which  are  bleeding  in  the 
flesh  of  the  lovers,  wounds  that  the  sacred  spear,  which 
the  hero  brings  back  with  him,  shall  never  heal. 

I.  —  I  have  heard  amateurs  of  music  uphold  the  fol- 
lowing thesis  —  that  the  musical  imagination  has  no  need 
of  the  dramatic  element  in  so  far  as  it  is  manifested  by 
the  characters  and  passions  :  "  The  drama  "  say  they 
"  lies  in  music  itself  and  the  architectural  development 
of  the  different  parts  of  a  symphony  in  which  everything 
holds  its  place,  binds  and  helps  the  one  the  other,  and 
produces  a  veritable  construction  of  sounds.  The 
classic  phases  of  the  symphony  are  modelled  with  a 
truly  Platonic  sagacity  upon  the  movements  of  the  soul 
whensoever  a  vivid  emotion  powerfully  shakes  that  soul 
and  the  latter  sings  its  agony  after  the  wound  has  been 


Appendix,  247 

received.  Andante,  Adagio,  Allegro,  Scherzo,  Finale  — 
those  are  the  stages  of  sensibility  which  philosophers 
did  not  invent  and  which  correspond  to  the  sublimest 
reality,  an  intuition  for  which  only  belongs  from  age  to 
age  to  a  few  privileged  persons." 

I  am  ready  to  adhere  to  that  opinion  whenever  I  hear 
a  symphony  of  Beethoven.  It  even  seems  to  me  that  at 
that  moment  my  emotion  includes  a  deeper  and  rarer 
quality  than  it  does  when  listening  to  a  fragment  of  the 
Tetralogy. 

My  Father.  —  It  were  better  to  say  that  the  master- 
piece by  Beethoven  being  more  concentrated  and  closely 
woven  makes  a  total  impression  upon  you  in  a  much 
shorter  time  than  does  a  drama  with  its  necessary  stops 
and  changes  of  scenery  and  delays  for  explanation. 
Now  it  is  necessary  in  our  study  to  give  a  large  measure 
of  consideration  to  the  element  of  duration. 

There  are  some  people  cast  in  a  lighter  metal  who 
immediately  begin  to  vibrate  and  emit  a  sound  of  en- 
thusiasm which  quickly  stops  even  as  it  was  produced. 
There  are  others  of  a  thick  and  resisting  bronze  who 
retain  the  transmitted  vibrations.  There  are  minds 
which  are  slow  to  put  themselves  in  motion,  lazy  imagi- 
nations which,  when  they  have  once  been  persuaded 
and  captivated,  will  not  easily  abandon  that  object  which 
has  been  given  them  for  food.  They  transform  it  in  a 
thousand  ways.  It  has  entered  so  deeply  into  their  being 
that  there  is  no  longer  a  fear  that  it  will  escape.  It 
has  become  part  of  themselves  and  of  their  individual 
structure.  With  people  of  that  sort,  apparently  massive 
in  their  make,  the  phenomena  of  the  outer  world  assist 
a  genius  powerfully,  since  they  slip  into  the  flesh  and 
blood  of  the  artist  and  undergo  there  his  own  vicissitudes. 


248  Alphonse  Daudet. 

It  thus  happens  that  many  creators  have  a  tremendous 
but  restricted  originality.  With  them  everything  turns 
to  intensity.  Everything  that  reaches  them  from  the 
outside  suffers  at  once  the  changes  of  their  individual 
rules  and  impressions ;  whilst  others  have  a  far  broader 
field  of  humanity  which  can  be  ploughed  and  sowed 
throughout  its  entire  extent.  It  seems  to  me  that 
Beethoven  belongs  to  the  former  category. 

In  relation  to  him  you  spoke  of  "  Platonic  sagacity." 
The  state  of  soul  to  which  Plato  has  given  his  name 
might  well  merit  a  place  to  itself  in  our  little  work. 
Platonism  would  mean  that  the  imagination  submits 
itself  to  laws  which  would  give  it  more  energy  whilst 
moderating  and  guiding  it. 

A  person  who  feels  a  powerful  impression  and  who  is 
gifted  with  extreme  sensibility  is  naturally  inclined  to 
restore  that  immediate  impression  to  the  world  in  the 
shape  of  some  work  of  art,  some  picture,  poem  or 
symphony.  The  method  is  entirely  instinctive  and  it 
causes  our  brain  to  be  a  veritable  vat  in  which  fermen- 
tation goes  on.  It  captures  the  quick  admiration  of 
those  who  require  violent  emotions,  and  that  is  the 
greater  number  of  men.  But  there  is  a  great  class  of 
artists,  painters  and  philosophers  who  will  not  admit 
that  the  mind  is  not  influenced  by  a  rhythm  and  does 
not  obey  a  certain  harmony,  which  represent  a  higher 
condition  and  the  beauty  of  human  intelligence.  What 
Plato  taught  to  his  disciples  was  measure,  that  is  to  say 
a  mental  equilibrium  which  has  a  perfect  horror  of 
monsters  and  will  not  be  satisfied  with  a  hasty  and  con- 
fused improvisation. 

The  state  of  mind  which  has  been  named  for  Plato 
and  of  which  he  was  certainly  the  finest   example  is 


Appendix.  249 

brought  forth  by  that  same  self-control,  by  those  deep 
ponderings  which  are  destined  to  purify  images  and  by 
that  intimate  and  rich  arrangement  which  puts  the 
bridle  upon  lyricism ;  this  moral  state  is  found  again  in 
literature  at  all  ages  and  throughout  the  entire  field  of 
art.  It  is  found  in  Beethoven.  It  furnishes  the  artist 
with  a  mysterious  and  well-contained  beauty  and  a  wider 
action  upon  the  human  soul,  because  that  which  it 
creates  is  subjected  to  deep-going  movements,  to  the 
rhythmical  motion  of  the  human  soul  at  the  time  that  it 
is  filled  with  noble  thoughts. 

Happy  are  those  beings  of  imagination  compact  who 
have  known  how  to  control  their  own  mental  images 
and  have  not  allowed  the  tumultuous  products  of  their 
brain  to  escape  from  them  like  a  torrent  that  often  rolls 
down  mud  !  Such  concentration  and  self-mastery  make 
a  long  duration  of  admiration  certain,  one  hardly  knows 
why.  It  is  will  knit  to  intelligence,  it  includes  also  the 
power  of  order  and  equilibrium. 

To  return  to  music ;  with  respect  to  that,  I  own  to  the 
infirmity  or  the  virtue  that  I  love  it  so  much,  I  find  it 
difficult  to  make  a  selection.  I  love  military  music  pass- 
ing down  the  road,  the  thunder  of  the  sea,  the  gale 
through  the  pines.  What  puts  me  into  an  enthusiastic 
condition  with  Richard  Wagner  is  just  that  impression- 
ability of  his  for  every  sound  in  nature ;  how  that  same 
nature  does  saturate  and  overwhelm  his  work,  as  it  were 
with  the  force  of  a  hurricane  !  His  orchestral  parts 
cradle  and  swing  me  to  and  fro.  His  gentleness  and 
his  power  cause  me  to  pass  within  a  few  hours  through 
the  most  powerful  emotions,  emotions  in  fact  for 
which  no  one  can  fail  to  be  grateful  forever  to  the  man 
who  has  excited  them,  because   they  reveal  our   inner 


250,  Alphonse  Daudet. 

depths  to  ourselves.  I  love  and  admire  Beethoven  also 
for  the  wide  and  peaceful  landscapes  which  he  knows 
how  to  open  up  in  the  soul  of  sound,  in  what  I  am  in 
the  habit  of  calling  "  the  other  planet."  Italian  music 
enchants  me  and  in  Rossini  I  experience  that  extraor- 
dinary impression  of  melancholy  anguish  which  an  excess 
of  life  gives  us.  There  is  too  much  frenzy,  too  much 
movement ;  it  is  as  if  one  were  trying  to  escape  from 
death.  I  adore  Mendelssohn  and  his  delicious  pictures 
of  nature,  such  as  the  Symphonie  Romame  and  the 
Symphonie  Ecossaise.  There  are  certain  hours  toward 
nightfall  when  the  soul  of  Schumann  torments  me.  .  .  . 
But  to  number  them  all  would  be  never  to  end.  I  have 
lived  through  the  power  of  music  ;  I  am  a  dweller  upon 
its  planet. 

I.  —  It  seems  to  me  that  we  have  brought  back  some 
useful  observations  from  our  rapid  incursion  into  the 
arts.  But  the  arts  are  not  all  alike.  There  are  men  in 
whom  imagination  is  forever  bridled  by  their  will.  They 
are  interesting  for  us  to  observe,  because  in  such  cases 
we  see  that  same  faculty  warring  with  another  faculty 
which  constrains  and  limits  it. 

Happy  are  they  who  are  able  to  manifest  clearly  those 
sentiments  which  move  them  and  cause  the  world  to 
partake  of  their  transports  !  As  you  have  remarked  in 
a  celebrated  phrase,  the  imagination  of  the  orator  has 
like  everything  else  its  license,  its  broad  play-space,  its 
free  development.  It  increases  its  power  through  that 
special  kind  of  intoxication  which  comes  to  the  orator 
from  the  listeners  and  fills  him  constantly  with  new 
energy.  The  length  of  time  is  of  special  importance 
when  it  comes  to  this.  For  rapidity  is  its  first  necessity, 
since  the  man  who  uses  his  imagination  in  public  must 


Appendix.  251 

before  everything  else  imagine  quickly  and  truly.  Truly, 
that  is  to  say,  in  the  way  and  with  the  aid  of  formulas 
capable  of  impressing  those  who  listen  to  him.  More- 
over the  art  of  oratory  is  unfortunately  too  often  nothing 
but  an  avalanche  of  commonplaces,  because  the  rem- 
nants of  the  mind  generally  present  themselves  first  to 
one's  memory. 

But  what  is  of  greater  importance  to  our  study  of  the 
phenomena  of  oratory  is  the  imagination  in  the  man  of 
action.  If  he  is  tormented  by  this  great  faculty,  the 
man  of  action  will  surely  suffer  deceptions  and  dissatis- 
factions incomparable,  since  he  is  forced  to  be  realistic. 
The  result  is  that  with  him  the  imaginative  act  has  less 
importance  than  the  means  to  arrive  at  a  result.  And 
it  is  the  equilibrium  of  these  two  endeavors  that  con- 
stitutes the  fate  of  the  hero,  just  as  Carlyle  says. 

We  know  well  enough  what  the  poet  or  the  orator  or 
the  writer  sees  during  his  spectral  revelations  of  imagina- 
tion —  words  and  sounds  that  his  spirit  can  grasp,  and, 
higher  up,  strange  ideas  which  are  in  constant  change  of 
form  because  they  are  about  to  enter  into  very  varied 
bodies,  —  splendid  costumes  —  a  traversing  of  seasons 
and  climes  —  merging  and  mixing  with  others  —  carry- 
ing crowds  with  them  —  rousing  up  memories  of  the 
past !  And  in  good  sooth  there  is  nothing  more  de- 
lightful for  the  mind  than  to  follow  up  the  life  of  an 
image,  its  longer  or  shorter  existence,  its  origin  from  the 
moment  it  forms  itself  in  the  brain  of  its  master  to  the 
time  when,  having  moved  about  the  world  and  having 
realized  its  power,  it  falls  into  the  common  reservoir  of 
show-case  beauties,  beauties  which  have  no  longer  any 
effective  action. 

We  know  also  how  the  pamter  sees  when  he  paints 


252  Alphonse  Daudet. 

and  the  musician  when  he  composes.  At  any  rate  we 
have  in  regard  to  such  creative  states  of  mind  certain 
notions  and  testimony  which  we  enlarge  into  theories 
and  which  satisfy  our  intellectual  laziness. 

But  on  the  other  hand  that  of  which  we  completely 
lack  knowledge  is  the  manner  in  which  mental  images 
comport  themselves  in  the  man  of  action.  Certain 
recent  philosophical  hypotheses  concerning  which  we 
must  soon  vex  ourselves  attribute  an  effective  power  to 
mental  images.  It  is  certain  that  when  alive  and  active 
they  tend  constantly  to  become  real.  According  to 
Fouillde's  phrase,  they  are  *'  motrices.'"  A  beautiful 
picture,  a  lovely  symphony,  a  magnificent  bit  of  litera- 
ture do  not  only  infuse  power  into  us  ;  such  things  drag  us 
along  in  their  wake  and  put  us  into  a  mental  condition 
as  close  as  possible  to  themselves.  It  is  thus  that  war- 
like songs  and  the  rolling  of  drums  pour  heroism  into 
the  hearts  of  citizens. 

If  you  would  only  accept  the  characterizations  and 
definitions  of  metaphysics  I  would  gladly  say  that  the 
man  of  action  is  he  in  whom  mental  images  have  the 
strongest  tendency  to  become  real. 

My  Father.  —  My  fear  of  philosophy  does  not  go  to 
the  length  of  causing  me  to  reject  a  formula  without 
examination  which  is  at  least  convenient.  What  I 
object  to  in  your  definition  is  the  fact  that  it  eludes 
the  difficulty  and  gets  out  of  the  scrape  by  the  use  of 
words. 

Let  us  look  at  an  example,  the  grandest  and  most 
striking  of  this  century.  Napoleon.  And  then  at  another, 
Bismarck.  And  again  at  a  third,  Stanley.  Our  modem 
epoch  which  is  reproached  for  the  poorness  of  its  blood 
seems  to  me  nevertheless  a  privileged  period  so  far  as 


Appendix,  253 

the  existence  of  heroes  is  concerned,  for  these  three  are 
characteristic. 

The  closest  to  me  is  Napoleon.  His  Southern  race 
is  the  reason  why  I  can  class  him  best,  because  his  for- 
mulas touch  me  better  and  his  means  are  a  little 
clearer  to  me. 

It  seems  that  his  imagination,  like  his  will,  was  exces- 
sive, ceaseless  and  I  might  say  frightful.  Above  all 
things  it  was  tenacious,  and  in  spite  of  his  celebrated 
phrase  it  did  not  altogether  die  at  Saint- Jean-d' Acre. 
What  kept  him  in  motion  and  roused  him  always  was  his 
sensibility  with  regard  to  glory  and  authority.  The 
example  of  the  grand  captains  and  leaders  of  peoples 
were  forever  present  in  his  thoughts.  He  quotes  and 
invokes  them,  never  will  he  admit  discussion  about 
them.  He  is  a  Latin  to  the  very  marrow,  through  his 
mental  uprightness,  through  his  lucidity,  through  his 
judgment.  There  are  even  moments  when  he  shows 
himself  a  Philistine,  and  he  the  enthusiast  appears 
timid  in  the  name  of  enthusiasm  and  fears  the  results  of 
first  impulses.  It  very  seldom  happens  that  passion  and 
imagination  are  not  connected  and  up  to  a  certain 
point  parallel.  Now  this  "  imaginative  "  was  a  grand 
creature  of  passion.  We  might  have  doubted  it  a  little, 
but  the  researches  made  by  Frederic  Masson  have  made 
the  light  upon  this  point  absolutely  clear. 

Well,  in  a  brain  like  that,  the  most  insensate  and 
grandiose,  the  most  unlimited  projects  wing  their  way  in 
flaming  line.  I  do  not  in  the  least  believe  that  he  con- 
fined his  desires  to  that  which  he  believed  he  could 
realize.  His  desire  and  his  mental  images  march  far 
before  him  and  his  will  follows  them  far  behind — en- 
raged against  himself  and  others  about  him  whenever  he 


254  Alp  house  Daudet. 

did  not  reach  its  aim,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  calcu- 
lating chances  of  success  with  an  energy  and  a  hare- 
brained audacity  and  a  tenacity  in  application  which 
have  never  had  their  equal  in  this  world.  Whenever  he 
secured  a  triumph,  whenever  he  satisfied  his  own  ambi- 
tion on  any  point,  triumph  and  ambition  had  already 
been  discounted  a  long  while.  And,  as  we  have  positive 
witness,  they  no  longer  gave  him  any  pleasure.  Alas, 
that  is  the  fault  of  the  imagination  in  activity !  It 
devours  the  crop  when  in  the  green  shoot  and  the 
result  always  seems  piteously  inferior  to  the  desire. 

I  once  had  a  friend  who,  notwithstanding  that  he  was 
always  lucky  in  whatever  he  attempted,  was  always  con- 
stantly morose.  He  adored  travels.  When  he  was 
about  to  undertake  one  he  talked  without  end  about  it 
and  for  a  long  while  before  he  left.  He  surrounded 
himself  with  guide  books  and  information.  He  asked 
questions  of  every  one  he  could.  You  would  find  him 
seated  in  the  midst  of  charts,  plans  and  photographs. 
But  at  the  very  moment  of  starting  he  had  already 
enjoyed  all  his  pleasure.  His  imagination  was  a  lively 
one  and  in  that  way  became  a  constant  scourge.  If  he 
undertook  anything,  he  represented  to  himself  alter- 
nately success  or  failure  with  such  a  power  that  neither 
the  one  nor  the  other  could  give  him  the  slightest  sensa- 
tion when  they  came.  On  this  little  side  of  his  my 
friend  recalled  to  me  the  Great  Emperor,  the  Unamusa- 
ble.  "  I  have  yawned  my  way  through  life  !  "  cried 
Chateaubriand,  who  was  another  powerful  imaginative. 

What  strikes  and  moves  us,  moreover,  in  the  mental 
conceptions  of  Bonaparte  was  his  rapidity  and  univer- 
sality. Roederer  shows  us  the  Emperor  at  the  State 
Council  occupying  himself  with  everything,   a  man  of 


Appe7idix.  255 

detail  to  an  excessive  degree,  following  out  every  ques- 
tion in  all  particulars,  calling  for  replies,  making  notes, 
classifying  and  asking  the  advice  of  inventive  minds. 
And  it  is  the  same  everywhere  and  always,  whether  in  his 
armchair  or  on  the  battlefield  —  what  disconcerts  us  is 
the  going  to  work  of  an  imagination  of  admirable  supple- 
ness, one  which  facts  could  never  repulse. 

Which  facts  coicld  never  7-epidse.  That  imagination  of 
Bonaparte  differed  in  this  particular  from  any  others 
which  have  been  perhaps  more  surprising  than  his  own 
but  have  engaged  with  other  objects  or  projects  that 
lie  beyond  and  outside  of  reality.  After  all,  clever 
turns  of  thought  are  easy  enough  when  they  are  com- 
pared with  that  long  patience  which  is  able  to  make 
something  actual. 

And  in  fact  Napoleon  was  very  much  incensed  with 
those  persons  whose  grindstones  turn  on  nothing,  with 
those  useless  windmills  !  If  he  had  a  detestation  of 
ideologues,  it  was  because  such  people  represent  lost 
strength,  and  nothing  irritated  that  great  man  like 
bungled  work  and  failure.  One  is  sometimes  ready  to 
ask  whether  he  was  wrong  after  all,  considering  the 
abuse  which  people  make  nowadays  of  words  and 
formulas.  For  my  part  I  feel  a  certain  displeasure 
when  I  see  human  thought  flying  wide  of  humanity  and 
spending  so  much  power  in  hollow  speculations. 

I. —  Do  you  not  think  that  the  imagination  of  meta- 
physicians has  its  own  distant  utility?  It  seems  to  me 
that  in  that  mist  where  they  move  great  events  prepare 
themselves.  There  is  no  doubt  that  it  represents  the 
disquiet  which  attends  an  epoch.  Deprived  of  imme- 
diate objects  on  which  to  work,  or  disdaining  them, 
thought  takes  itself  for  its  own  study.     There  is  a  revo- 


256  Alphonse  Daudet. 

lutionary  virtue  in  the  constant  questioning  which  she 
causes  all  problems  to  undergo ;  let  us  avoid  dissimula- 
tion ;  a  perpetual  state  of  revolution  is  the  best  state  for 
the  brain.  Ideas  which  congeal  and  fix  themselves 
solidly  become  authoritative  and  odious.  The  Church 
has  not  been  alone  in  oflfering  an  example  of  a  philosophy 
of  liberty  which  supplies  weapons  to  despotism.  All 
principles  have  a  tendency  to  become  immovable  and 
play  the  tyrant  to  their  victims.  Metaphysics  have  this 
thing  in  their  favor  that  they  engage  with  the  radical 
principles  themselves  and  at  the  very  moment  when  the 
latter  think  that  they  are  victorious,  destroy  them  and 
give  place  to  others. 

Let  us  not  separate,  if  so  you  please,  the  imagination 
of  ideas  from  the  imagination  of  acts.  The  hatred  of 
Napoleon  for  Ideology  must  not  make  us  forget  that  he 
himself  fought  in  honor  of  an  Ideology,  namely  his  own, 
and  that  he  wished  to  impose  it  upon  the  universe. 

jNIy  Father.  —  That  man  was  a  veritable  element 
himself  and  the  elements  alone  were  able  to  draw 
bounds  and  limits  for  him ;  heat  in  Spain  and  cold  in 
Russia  said  to  him  :  "  Farther  than  this  thou  shalt  not 
go."  The  man  who  reaches  such  summits  of  power  is 
intoxicated  by  his  sudden  ascension ;  his  outlook  does 
not  extend  in  accordance  with  the  heights  to  which  he 
rises ;  it  is  only  his  desire  which  increases. 

After  everything  has  been  considered,  if  it  were  neces- 
sary to  give  a  sub-title  to  the  history  of  Napoleon,  that 
sub-title  might  perhaps  be  "  Or  the  Man  of  Imagi- 
nation." What  he  actually  realized  in  his  short  and 
frantic  life  is  a  warrant  for  us  concerning  what  he 
dreamed.  How  many  dreams  must  have  gone  to  pro- 
duce a  single  act ! 


Appendix.  257 

Note  in  passing  the  extraordinary  attraction  which 
imaginatives  exercise  one  upon  the  other.  They  trail 
each  other  by  the  scent.  They  divine  each  other  and 
understand  each  other  with  half  a  word ;  they  are  all 
ready  to  help  each  other. 

Up  to  now  we  have  been  considering  as  the  represent- 
atives oi  \}s\2i\.  faculty  which  delivers  only  the  artists,  phil- 
osophers and  men  of  action,  in  a  word  the  great  men 
who  are  the  representatives  of  the  lofty  imagination. 
Our  reckoning  would  not  be  complete  if  we  took  no  ac- 
count of  types  of  the  lower  imagination. 

Such  types  are  numberless ;  we  rub  elbows  with  them 
every  day.  I  thought  it  was  my  duty  to  give  them  an 
important  place  in  my  work.  In  his  dramas  like  The 
Wild  Duck  Ibsen  has  also  interested  himself  in  them. 
Some  are  found  in  the  novels  of  Dickens  and  those  of 
Tourgu^nieif ;  and  I  certainly  forget  others. 

Many  who  are  imprisoned  by  the  realities  of  life  do 
not  for  that  reason  lose  their  illusions.  Like  people 
plunged  in  hallucinations  they  march  on  in  their  wretch- 
edness, seeing  nothing,  feeling  nothing,  always  expecting 
the  inheritance  or  the  extraordinary  chance  in  the 
lottery,  or  the  kind  gentleman  who  comes  their  way  and 
adopts  them,  or  the  lady  who  calls  to  her  coachman  : 
"  Halt !  "  and  turning  to  the  foot  passenger,  "  Get  in,  this 
is  your  own  carriage  !  "  Admirable  hopes  are  these 
which  help  to  make  all  evils  bearable.  Those  who  carry 
about  with  them  in  their  feeble  brains  that  transforming 
virtue  have  no  need  of  alcohol,  nor  opium,  nor  any  kind 
of  exciting  things.  If  they  have  no  lire  they  can  make 
a  hearth ;  if  they  lack  bread,  they  form  a  mental  image  of 
a  feast. 

Don  Quixote  is  an  admirable  book  because  it  consists 
17 


258  Alp  house  Daudet. 

of  a  monograph  of  one  of  these  inferior  imaginations, 
and  another  example  is  Madame  Bovary.  That  is  why 
I  call  the  faculty  of  evoking  images  that  faculty  which 
delivers.  Just  as  those  children  are  sheltered  from  sor- 
row and  melancholy  whom  we  see  amusing  themselves 
all  alone  and  inventing  games  without  the  help  of 
comrades,  exactly  so  the  wretched  to  whom  Providence 
has  intrusted  the  magic  wand  support  their  burdens  with 
ease. 

Such  "  stories  "  and  "  legends  "  as  the  little  as  well  as 
the  great  call  for  have  only  one  aim :  To  supply  what 
is  lacking  to  imaginations  which  are  weak,  introduce  into 
an  often  hard  and  implacable  life  another  life  which  does 
not  belong  to  it,  where  things  come  at  the  right  moment, 
watchful  fairies  combat  evil  geniuses  and  pain  and  suffer- 
ing roll  away,  permitting  Gladness  to  be  seen  smiling 
upon  her  pedestal.  We  have  just  been  judging  art  from 
a  bird's-eye  view  with  regard  to  its  intrinsic  qualities  in 
the  Chinese  fashion,  but  not  according  to  its  results ; 
now  art  has  the  sublime  destiny  of  creating  about  and 
above  our  souls  enough  consoling  or  amusing  images  to 
prevent  existence  from  crushing  the  souls  —  whether 
because  these  images  become  an  enlarged  looking-glass 
reflecting  their  condition  which  permits  them  to  look 
upon  themselves  in  beauty,  or  because  they  represent  a 
condition  far  superior  whither  illusion  will  drag  them. 
Pascal  has  celebrated  dreams  in  a  memorable  phrase 
which  puts  shepherds  and  kings  on  the  same  level.  The 
role  that  our  faculty  must  play  is  to  create  a  perpetual 
dream.  The  world  would  soon  come  to  an  end  if  it 
were  not  for  the  imaginatives  and  the  story-tellers.  Com- 
passionate reality  takes  care  to  put  on  her  programme 
from    time    to  time    the  realization    of   some   beautiful 


Appe7idix,  259 

dream  in  order  that  illusion  shall  not  be  altogether  lost. 
So  it  is  that  we  see  treasures  discovered,  a  shepherd  who 
wins  a  princess  to  wife,  and  reparation  for  great  injustices. 
Such  short  respites  from  evil  and  baseness  are  sufficient 
to  perpetuate  hope.  In  proportion  as  the  religious 
imagination  which  offered  wretched  men  pictures  all 
ready  and  painted  has  disappeared,  it  would  seem  that  the 
other  imagination  of  which  I  am  speaking  has  augmented. 
Mankind  has  more  than  ever  need  of  those  dreams 
which  uncompromising  realists  would  like  to  suppress. 

I.  —  The  chances  of  conversation  have  caused  us  to 
follow  a  singular  path  ;  we  certainly  might  be  allowed  to 
return  upon  our  steps  to  examine  the  road  we  have 
traversed. 

We  began  by  recognizing  the  importance  of  Imagina- 
tion and  rather  than  define  it  we  have  mentioned  its 
powers  in  detail.  Then  we  established  the  closeness 
of  connection  which  it  entertains  with  the  faculty  of 
feeling,  and  to  such  effect  that  it  appeared  to  us  finally 
as  an  extended  sensibility.  Every  man  carries  about  in 
himself  a  faculty  for  being  an  architect  which  pushes 
him  to  complete  any  active  feeling,  but  he  is  not  satisfied 
with  that,  his  life  has  impressed  him  strongly.  He  looks 
for  something  more  and  that  prolongation  of  effort  con- 
stitutes the  faculty  of  receiving  images. 

After  these  premisses  we  then  entered  into  the  heart 
of  the  subject  and  we  resolved  to  proceed  by  examples. 
We  have  traversed  with  long  steps  the  arts  and  sciences 
and  their  method,  and  on  our  way  have  examined  all 
the  imaginary  trails  and  have  followed  them  whenever 
they  seemed  to  us  worth  while. 

In  this  way  we  have  arrived  through  the  representa- 
tives of  humanity  to  the  very  frontiers  of  life  itself;  and 


26o  Alphonse  Daudet. 

it  is  very  easy  to  see  that  I  have  undergone  your  influ- 
ence, since,  having  taken  our  departure  from  an  abstract 
point,  we  have  arrived  at  the  place  where  we  are  exam- 
ining absolutely  concrete  points  of  view. 

Once  or  twice  we  almost  deviated  into  metaphysics, 
but  with  a  little  energy  we  have  kept  that  method  in 
reserve  for  the  moment  when  we  might  wish  to  endeavor 
to  make  a  synthesis  instead  of  an  analysis. 

My  Father.  —  That  word  "  method  "  makes  me 
smile,  not  that  I  have  not  the  greatest  respect  for 
Descartes,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  his  Discours  has  now 
reached  to  a  certain  extent  the  state  of  dogma.  Des- 
cartes understood  the  mathematical  sciences  very  well 
and  his  entire  work  is  based  on  them.  To-day  while 
biological  sciences  are  ruling  the  roost,  it  seems  as  if 
method  itself  had  undergone  certain  modifications. 

It  is  intentionally  that  up  to  the  present  moment  I 
have  kept  our  conversation  within  the  limits  of  live 
things.  I  know  only  too  well  that  one  rambles  whenever 
one  goes  aside  from  humanity.  The  faculties  or  passions, 
considered  outside  of  those  who  possess  or  suffer  them, 
appear  to  me  to  be  false  entities  :  "  the  straw  of  words 
for  the  clear  grain  of  things  "  —  that  is  a  reproach  from 
a  metaphysician,  Leibnitz,  I  think. 

The  position  of  a  romance  writer  therefore  in  modern 
times  would  be  at  one  and  the  same  time  historical  and 
philosophical ;  historical,  because  he  lives  in  a  certain 
epoch  and  saturates  himself  with  the  turn  of  mind  of  that 
epoch  and  its  characteristics  and  leaves  a  picture  of  it 
which  moves  the  reader ;  philosophical,  because  he  seizes 
upon  the  passions  in  their  activity  within  the  human 
tissue  where  they  dwell,  and  endeavors  to  elevate  them 
from  the  particular  to  the  general. 


Appendix.  261 

I.  —  Since  we  have  reached  the  question  of  persons 
affected  by  their  passions,  do  you  not  think  that  they  in- 
troduce important  modifications  into  the  phenomena  of 
imagination?  We  see,  ourselves,  how  much  our  intelli- 
gence is  upset  by  various  episodes  in  our  existence. 

Thus  love  is  a  very  powerful  and  very  mysterious 
source  of  images.  Like  a  poison  it  transforms  the  entire 
look  of  nature  and  opens  in  the  soul  novel  regions. 
Then  it  is  that  one  perceives  to  what  dire  extent  one 
ignores  one's  own  character. 

There  are  human  beings  in  whom  the  imagination  has, 
so  to  speak,  nothing  to  say,  or  is  reduced  to  its  simplest 
expression.  They  are  content  with  such  natural  phe- 
nomena as  life  presents  to  them,  or  more  exactly  accord- 
ing to  that  routine  which  the  habit  of  the  senses  traces 
for  them.  They  never  leave  their  exact  limits.  They 
consider  any  one  who  raises  himself  a  little  bit  above  the 
ordinary  level,  seeks  to  interpret  that  which  moves  him 
and  make  more  important  that  which  surrounds  him,  as 
crazy  or  diseased. 

Well,  when  love  touches  human  beings  of  that  sort  they 
change  completely,  so  that  their  surroundings  can  hardly 
recognize  them.  Owing  to  the  new  sentiment  strange 
forces  agitate  themselves  for  the  first  time  within  their 
breasts,  forces  which  disquiet  and  upset  them.  They 
attribute  virtues  to  inanimate  things.  They  hear  the 
birds  sing.  They  perceive  that  stars  exist.  In  short  it 
is  the  education  of  Caliban.  Nothing  more  moving  than 
this  metamorphosis ;  it  causes  us  to  imagine  some  secret 
education  conducted  by  nature. 

My  Father.  —  There  is  nothing  like  love  to  rouse  the 
sleeping  powers  of  a  man.  Every  violent  movement  of 
consciousness  has  the  same  result.     Undoubtedly  jeal- 


262,  Alp  house  Daudet. 

ousy  may  be  able  to  make  a  poet  out  of  a  very  common- 
place individual.  As  we  have  known  since  Spinoza,  this 
vice  particularly  favors  the  imagination.  It  excites 
pictures  of  exuberant  richness  in  the  most  burning 
regions  of  the  soul,  forming  the  worst  of  tortures,  which 
renew  and  transform  themselves,  or  else,  increasing  in 
depth,  become  a  veritable  obsession. 

But  apart  from  jealousy  let  us  look  for  instance  at 
avarice.  That  passion  wonderfully  sharpens  the  wits  of 
him  who  carries  it  about  him.  It  makes  him  aware  of 
a  multitude  of  small  details  which  he  would  never  have 
remarked  without  its  presence.  When  his  favorite  topic 
excites  him,  it  causes  him  to  utter  sublime  phrases,  re- 
markable utterances  which  we  are  not  surprised  to  dis- 
cover in  the  mouth  of  a  Pere  Grandet,  and  which  of  a 
certainty  Balzac  actually  collected  from  misers  whom  he 
knew. 

And  there  's  the  egoist,  of  whom  George  Meredith  has 
traced  so  wonderful  a  portrait  —  what  stratagems  does 
he  not  employ  and  through  what  persevering  rounds 
does  he  not  gradually  bring  back  the  entire  world  to 
his  own  personality  ! 

The  scrupulous  man  is  less  studious  and  less  favored 
by  literature,  although  he  is  nevertheless  a  character  that 
occurs  very  often ;  the  scrupulous  man  may  be  consid- 
ered a  victim  of  his  own  imagination.  It  is  imagination 
which  swells  up  the  slightest  acts  in  his  mind,  such  acts 
as  an  ordinary  man  never  considers  as  of  more  than 
secondary  importance,  and  with  excellent  reason,  because 
otherwise  they  would  clog  and  destroy  his  life  after  the 
fashion  of  parasitic  plants.  Scrupulosity  is  a  very  wide- 
spread malady  of  the  soul.  Theologians  understand  it 
and  have  made  excellent  descriptions  of  it.     But  they 


Appendix.  263 

have  noticed  only  one  of  its  forms,  the  religious  variant, 
although  it  takes  on  the  most  varied  aspects  and  torments 
the  most  dissimilar  souls.  What  characterizes  it  espe- 
cially is  an  anomalous  condition  of  the  moral  vision 
caused  by  imagination  which  excites  and  turns  it 
aside. 

And  by  that  step  we  reach  remorse,  in  which  imagina- 
tion plays  a  leading  part.  That  person  who  is  able  by 
an  effort  of  his  mind  to  reconstruct  a  scene  from  life, 
hear  the  sounds  and  see  the  colors  and  gestures  of  it, 
and  recall  the  odors,  that  man  would  do  well  to  abstain 
from  any  wrong  act. 

I.  —  Don't  you  think  that  one  might  make  an  inter- 
esting study  of  remorse  showing  itself  in  an  undevel- 
oped character,  which  has  been  hitherto  rebellious  to 
feelings  and  even  to  all  sensations  apart  from  hunger, 
thirst  and  weariness?  Little  by  little  one  might  see 
him  enlightening  himself  from  the  flame  of  the  torches 
of  the  Eumenides.  His  torture  would  be  a  revelation 
to  him. 

My  Father.  —  That  is  a  miracle  which  often  occurs. 
Whether  undeveloped  or  over-refined,  the  greater  num- 
ber of  mankind  are  delivered  through  suffering  of 
the  forces  which  are  contained  within.  A  telling  mo- 
ment in  our  study  would  be  the  connection  of  suffering 
with  imagination.  The  person  who  groans  understands 
the  groaning  of  others.  The  man  who  has  a  sore  readily 
sympathizes  with  the  sores  of  another.  That  is  it,  pity 
.  .  .  that  is  the  great  intermediary.  That  penetrates  not 
only  hearts,  it  penetrates  brains  also  and  makes  the 
nerves  sensitive.  Nature  opens  wide  her  portals  for 
the  person  invaded  thereby  and  he  believes  that  the 
world  has  been  revealed  to  him  all  of  a  sudden,  so  much 


264  Alp  house  Daudet. 

does  he  become  aware  of  the  lamentations  round  about 
him,  so  much  does  he  interest  himself  in  a  new  and  pro- 
found way  in  trees,  animals  and  his  own  fellow-beings. 
Artists  who  are  especially  marked  by  pity  have  in  that 
respect  a  very  particular  mark  which  distinguishes  them 
profoundly  from  others. 

Pity  it  is  which  excites  inspiration  in  Dickens  and 
Dostoiewski.  It  is  by  the  way  of  pity  that  they  glide 
into  the  souls  of  children,  debauchees,  martyrs  and 
criminals  with  a  truth  that  amazes  us.  For  if  Dante 
appeared  to  his  contemporaries  like  a  revenant  from  the 
infernal  regions,  from  what  accursed  countries  did  not 
that  Englishman  and  that  Russian  return,  bearing  such 
pallor  on  their  faces  and  showing  such  a  trembUng  in 
their  hands? 

It  is  pity  which  conducted  them  down  into  the  sombre 
trench  where  human  suffering  moans.  It  was  that  which 
raised  the  trap-door.  They  leant  over  the  abyss  without 
disgust  and  they  have  brought  back  to  their  fellows  new 
cries  of  anguish  and  new  subjects  for  indignation. 

For  after  the  pity  which  widens  the  imagination 
comes  that  anger  which  fixes  its  features  and  gives  it 
the  necessary  warmth.     The  two  feelings  are  connected. 

I.  —  In  your  last  remarks  there  is  the  germ  of  a 
theory  which  I  believe  is  true  with  respect  to  the  origin 
of  satire. 

Satirical  writers  are  reversed  lyrical  minds.  Gifted 
with  nerves  of  prodigious  sensitiveness  and  a  marvellous 
imagination,  they  have  been  placed  by  their  lives  in 
such  conditions  that  their  pride  was  broken,  their  pity 
exasperated,  and  their  anger  perpetually  roused  by  the 
spectacle  of  oppression  and  pain  so  far  as  men  apply 
oppression  and  pain  to  their  fellows.     A  new  sense  is 


Appendix,  265 

then  born  in  them  which  renders  existence  a  pain, 
and  leaves  them  no  repose,  the  sense  of  injustice.  In 
Aristophanes,  Swift,  Fielding,  Rabelais,  Cervantes  and 
Voltaire,  in  fact  in  all  the  great  men  filled  with  indigna- 
tion, it  is  possible  to  perceive  the  lyrical  power,  but 
drawn  aside  and  transformed  by  a  feeling  of  universal 
iniquity. 

Whilst  on  the  one  side  human  beings,  steeped  in 
lethargy  by  their  laziness,  their  cowardice  or  simply 
habit,  support  the  spectacle  of  oppression  without  com- 
plaining, these  liberators  of  the  human  spirit,  who  are 
enemies  of  all  power  and  control,  I  almost  said  of  every 
law,  insist  upon  seeing  nothing  in  mankind  except  an 
animal  which  is  in  pain  and  which  when  it  is  in  pain 
is  no  longer  responsible  for  its  movements  of  reaction 
against  suffering. 

Still,  in  their  hands  literature  rises  out  of  the  rule  of 
the  mandarin  and  issues  from  the  ivory  tower.  It 
assumes  a  social  importance  and  thus  we  see  that  the 
part  played  by  imagination  may  be  not  only  that  of  the 
liberator  but  the  avenger. 

My  Father.  —  The  sad  doctrine  of  the  fatalists  states 
that  one  can  do  nothing  to  nothing.  Despite  all  efforts 
the  sum  of  injustice  will  ever  remain  the  same  upon 
earth  and  the  cries  of  the  satirists  shall  be  in  vain. 

Of  a  certainty  the  spectacle  that  history  presents  fills 
us  with  deep  melancholy.  For  men  like  Michelet  or 
Carlyle  it  furnished  the  stimulus  to  their  imaginations ; 
bent  over  that  spectacle  as  over  a  deep  abyss,  they  heard 
the  distant  enormous  tumult  of  battle  and  perceived  shapes 
flying  in  rout,  combats  and  metamorphoses.  The  vanity 
of  all  laws  which  cannot  maintain  men  within  the  limits 
of  the  good  and  right  struck  them,  laws  which  are  often 


266  Alphonse  Daudet. 

the  daughters  of  tyranny,  laws  which  one  day  brings 
forth  and  the  next  destroys,  laws  which  ever  present 
themselves  with  a  harsh,  immovable  and  savage  face. 

In  the  minds  of  those  great  poets  of  fact  pity  and 
anger  must  have  been  carried  to  the  point  of  paroxysm 
by  the  spectacle  of  horrors  for  which  they  could  not 
furnish  any  remedy  whatsoever.  History  is  like  the 
bottom  of  the  sea  with  its  races  between  voracious 
foes,  its  ambuscades,  its  perpetual  struggle  for  life,  its 
implacability. 

But  there  is  another  painful  aspect  of  history  which  is 
very  well  calculated  to  strike  violent  imaginations  and 
that  is  its  automatism,  I  had  all  of  a  sudden,  whilst 
listening  one  day  in  the  garden  to  the  singing  of  a  bird, 
a  vision  of  nature  regulated  in  its  manifestation,  nature 
without  the  unexpected,  without  joy  and  without  mys- 
tery, somewhat  like  a  series  of  scenery  in  an  opera  suc- 
ceeding the  one  the  other  according  to  hours  and 
seasons,  through  which  a  certain  number  of  changeless 
characters  ever  marched  clothed  in  their  usual  cos- 
tumes and  placed  in  their  conventional  poses.  What  a 
horrible  nightmare  !  Liberty  issuing  from  the  world  and 
leaving  behind  only  the  automaton  .  .  .  never  before 
did  fatalism  seem  to  me  so  living  and  terrible  ! 

Well,  the  spectacle  of  history  is  somewhat  differently 
powerful  than  the  song  of  a  bird,  that  it  should  make 
us  believe  in  certain  j^eriods,  certain  laws,  a  necessary 
rhythm,  a  long-foreseen  succession  of  murders,  wars  and 
empires.  That  murmur  which  rises  from  history  has 
likewise  its  predetermined  phases,  its  movements  of 
piano-forte.  From  a  great  distance  communities  appear 
like  those  ant-heaps,  the  destiny  of  which  some  English 
scientist,   I  know  not   which,   profoundly   changed   by 


Appendix.  267 

pouring  upon  certain  kinds  of  ants  a  spoonful  of  another 
kind  of  ants  —  so  much  does  such  an  act  furnish  an 
abbreviated  picture  of  the  making  of  races  and  realms. 

Beauty  of  imagination  consisting  as  it  does  more  espe- 
cially of  belief  in  that  liberty  which  it  gives  us,  I  can 
foresee  a  true  torture  for  the  historian  if  he  should  reach 
the  point  of  view  of  modern  fatality  and  determinism. 

I.  —  I  hold  to  that  phrase  you  have  just  pronounced 
which  delights  me  :  "  Beauty  of  imagination  consisting 
more  especially  of  belief  in  that  liberty  which  it  gives 
us." 

Whether  you  admit  it  or  not,  that  is  pure  metaphysics, 
and  it  is  certainly  strange  that  we  can  never  approach 
any  question  great  or  little  without  the  Science  of 
Sciences  making  its  appearance  at  a  given  moment  and 
forcing  the  mind  to  dig  deeper  yet,  down  into  its  own 
substance. 

This  torture  of  determinism,  which  is  very  apparent  in 
history  and  the  historians,  is  in  sober  fact  the  scourge  of 
the  imagination;  it  seems  to  impose  limits  upon  the 
imagination,  it  makes  the  imagination  believe  that  it  is 
itself  a  prisoner  to  formulas  and  embarrassed  by  laws  and 
that  it  is  impossible  to  free  itself  from  that  despotic  rule 
to  which  all  things,  all  beings  and  thoughts,  must 
submit. 

It  is  a  scourge  of  the  imagination  and  a  greater  one 
than  we  suppose,  because  it  limits  it  forever ;  not  only 
does  it  tear  its  heart  but  it  restricts  it  besides.  Un- 
questionably the  melancholy  of  wise  old  men  sprang 
from  no  other  reasons  and  the  belief  in  fatality  which 
came  to  them  through  the  exact  sciences  will  soon  appear 
among  the  races  of  the  West  in  as  frightful  a  form  as 
opium. 


268  Alphonse  Daudet. 

Like  opium  determinism  has  had  its  phase  of  elevation, 
followed  very  soon  by  a  phase  of  depression  which  carries 
a  man  toward  melancholy,  dark  thoughts  and  suicide. 
And  the  son  of  positivism  was  modern  pessimism.  Dur- 
ing the  flourishing  age  of  that  sombre  doctrine  great  was 
the  boldness  of  the  scientists.  They  pretended  to  con- 
trol and  lead  everything,  even  as  far  as  the  most  secret 
operation,  the  most  mysterious  movements  of  the  human 
brain.  It  coincided  exactly  with  certain  researches  made 
in  that  same  brain,  certain  hurried  and  hazardous  physi- 
ological incursions,  which  were  afterwards  called  locali- 
zations. And  from  the  Physiology  which  the  doctors 
thought  they  had  mastered,  there  sprang,  with  what 
pride  and  boasting  !  a  new  philosophy,  a  psycho-physi- 
ology !  Every  week  appeared  some  volume  with  red 
edges,  in  which  some  faculty  of  the  soul  was  analyzed 
according  to  the  most  recent  methods,  methods,  it  may  be 
said,  which  recalled  the  efforts  of  Bouvard  and  the  illus- 
trious P^cuchet  in  their  finest  periods  of  scientific  zeal. 

Strange  discussions  arose  in  which  ideas  were  dis- 
sected and  feelings  were  weighed  with  a  laughable  zeal ! 
Through  what  strange  aberration  of  mind  did  men  come 
to  indulge  in  such  childishness  who  were  no  more  foolish 
than  others  and  quite  as  capable  of  becoming  professors 
and  assistants,  just  as  well  as  their  comrades?  The 
moment  arrived  when  they  were  just  about  to  draw 
up  a  chart  7ie  varietur  of  the  human  passions,  with  all 
the  districts  neatly  bounded  and  with  a  table  of  excep- 
tions fully  drawn  up.  At  that  period  the  "  schema " 
flourished,  that  schema  which  has  been  termed  the  last 
concrete  vestige  of  an  opinion  which  has  become  abstract: 
it  soon  became  a  source  of  errors.  They  drew  on  the 
board  the  schema  of  pride  or  of  avarice  side  by  side 


Appendix.  269 

vdth  the  schema  of  the  reflex  actions  in  the  same.  They 
calculated  the  variations  of  sweat  and  other  secretions  in 
a  lover,  an  angry  man,  an  indifferent  person,  during 
their  crises,  apart  from  crises,  during  periods  of  calm, 
etc.  Every  assistant  professor  very  soon  thought  him- 
self an  admirable  philosopher  because  philosophy  had 
shrunk  to  a  narrow  chapter  of  medicine.  As  to  meta- 
physics, that  was  railed  upon,  scorned,  gibed  at,  and 
relegated  among  old  superstitions.  It  was  considered 
the  attribute  of  degenerates  or  fools,  for  it  may  be  noted 
that  this  was  also  the  blooming  period  for  the  mind 
doctors. 

Filled  with  zeal,  vigor  and  authority,  these  mind 
doctors  saw  no  obstacle  before  them.  Desirous  to 
furnish  on  a  new  system  their  houses  thus  built,  they 
claimed  as  their  clients  not  only  men  of  talent  but  also 
the  men  of  genius,  and  in  preference  artists,  whoever  had 
been  distinguished  through  his  pen  or  his  pencil.  The 
slightest  suggestion  of  art  became  suspicious.  This  con- 
versation upon  Imagination  would  have  left  no  doubt 
whatever  as  to  our  condition  of  mind.  And  on  their 
side  the  mind  doctors  started  a  rivalry  with  the  psycho- 
physiologists,  for  they  themselves  were  likewise  seriously 
occupied  in  weighing,  localizing  and  analyzing  the  human 
faculties,  and  really  nothing  was  prettier  than  those  little 
red,  blue  and  green  houses  which  they  attributed  to 
them  on  the  surface  of  the  brain. 

Suddenly  things  changed ;  a  new  generation  of  meta- 
physicians, ardent  and  vigorous,  rose  from  the  earth  at 
the  very  moment  that  it  was  thought  that  metaphysics 
were  buried.  Then  was  there  in  the  camp  of  the  Dia- 
foiruses  and  the  Purgons  of  philosophy  a  rout  indeed  ! 
They  made  a  sieve  of  their  follies.     People   began  to 


270  Alphonse  Daudet. 

look  askance  at  the  mind  doctors.  Serious  works  ap- 
peared in  which  things  returned  to  their  former  state 
because  so  many  pretended  discoveries  were  reduced  to 
their  real  proportions.  It  was  seen  that  many  of  the 
localizations  were  false  and  that  some  of  them  were  even 
absurd. 

To-day  treatises  on  Psycho-physiology  are  mouldering 
in  a  deep  shade.  To  their  great  regret  the  mind  doctors 
have  been  forced  to  renounce  their  pretensions  concern- 
ing art  and  artists.  We  sent  them  back  to  their  douches 
and  dark  cells  with  no  little  rudeness.  And  finally  as  a 
culmination  of  mortification,  a  metaphysic  of  liberty  was 
installed  anew  by  sharp  and  perspicuous  souls  which  is 
thoroughly  in  the  swim  of  modern  ideas. 

And  since  in  the  moral  world  everything  hangs  to- 
gether, it  may  be  remarked  that  the  theories  of  determi- 
nism, like  everything  else  which  gives  itself  up  to  fatality, 
flourished  during  the  epoch  of  oppression,  during  defeat 
and  distress,  whilst  on  the  other  hand  the  theories  of 
liberty  belong  to  the  vigorous  and  well-constituted 
generation.  For  there  again  it  is  —  fatalism  deprives 
people  entirely  of  energy  like  opium.  Is  it  not  singular 
that  modern  Germany  should  have  sprung  from  Hegel- 
ianism  and  the  doctrines  of  Fichte  and  Schelling?  The 
man  who  believes  himself  the  master  of  his  own  acts  is 
a  thousand  times  stronger  than  he  who  believes  that  his 
acts  have  been  ordained.  What  is  the  use  of  attempting 
to  move  if  movement  has  pre-established  causes,  if  free 
will  has  nothing  to  do  with  it? 

My  Father.  —  This  moral  point  of  view  is  important, 
and  it  is  certain  that  ideas  have  an  active  virtue  in  them 
even  if  they  appear  abstract  and  detached  from  all 
human  connection.     The  moral  world  exists  in  the  in- 


Appendix,  2  7 1 

tenor  of  the  social  world  like  water  in  an  aquarium, 
water  in  a  constant  state  of  movement.  This  world  is 
impressionable  to  everything  which  comes  from  without. 
A  doctrine  upsets  it  which  we  thought  had  no  danger  in 
it.  A  bad  law  works  in  the  same  way.  Men  are  so 
interknit  that  everything  holds  together  in  whatever 
springs  from  them. 

For  my  part  I  have  never  been  a  partisan  of  narrow 
fatalism ;  the  moment  that  my  conscientiousness  seems 
to  me  free,  I  have  admitted  that  it  was  free,  and  as  to 
incursions  into  the  domain  of  art  and  philosophy,  I 
think  they  are  as  misplaced  as  they  are  foolish. 

I  have  even  been  astounded  to  see  to  what  a  degree 
science  leaves  me  cold.  I  admire  science  in  its  living 
manifestations,  when  it  solaces  or  heals,  but  it  seems  to 
me  feeble  and  vacillating  in  its  theoretical  part  and  all 
the  more  pretentious  because  it  is  peculiarly  subject  to 
error. 

So  far  as  feelings  and  their  variations  are  concerned  I 
think  that  I  have  brought  to  this  study  absolute  upright- 
ness and  zeal.  After  forty  years  of  a  constant,  and  I 
might  almost  say,  sickly  observation  —  so  greatly  has  my 
fellow-man  always  tormented  me  —  I  have  reached  this 
certainty  that  I  know  very  few  things  and  possess  a 
very  small  circle  of  clear  ideas.  Those  who  pretend  to 
explore  that  delicate  realm  with  measuring  instruments, 
"  schemas  "  or  theories,  are  poor,  wretched,  lost  ones. 
They,  more  than  any  other  people,  deserve  the  reproach 
of  craziness.  One  must  be  mad  to  suppose  that  one 
could  concentrate  into  a  single  little  book  the  last  word 
that  is  to  be  said  upon  any  question  whatever  which  re- 
lates to  the  intelligence  or  the  will. 

So  far  as  scientists  are  concerned  they  have  interested 


2']2  Alphonse  Daudet. 

me,  after  my  whim,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree,  accord- 
ing as  their  science  was  more  or  less  human,  directing 
itself  toward  our  great  virtues  or  our  feeble  sides. 

I  have  known  admirable  physicians  who  were  not 
geniuses,  so  far  as  theories  are  concerned,  and  who  were 
nevertheless  healers.  They  went  straight  for  the  evil 
and  fought  it.  In  diagnosis  should  not  a  faculty  for 
mental  images  occupy  a  preponderating  part?  A  good 
clinical  physician  ought  to  represent  to  himself  the 
complete  chart  of  the  human  body  with  its  terrae 
incognitae,  its  lions  and  its  tigers,  like  those  on  old 
geographical  maps,  which  were  placed  there  to  show 
our  ignorance.  He  should  also  represent  sickness,  its 
causes,  march  and  progress,  then  through  heredity  — 
that  heredity  which  he  has  so  deplorably  abused  —  his 
imagination  continues  and  prolongs  itself  beyond  the 
individual  as  far  out  as  to  the  species  and  race. 

I.  —  So  far  as  discovery  and  its  mechanism  is  con- 
cerned, I  think  it  is  Claude  Bernard  who  has  shown  that 
it  proceeds  more  especially  through  analogy. 

The  phenomena  of  the  universe  form  one  vast  tapes- 
try in  which  everything  hangs  together  and  knot  is 
interknit  with  knot.  Ordinary  eyes  are  perfectly  con- 
tent with  the  figures  shown  upon  it  and  do  not  search 
farther  into  their  co-relations  the  one  with  the  other. 

Observers,  however,  are  anxious  as  to  the  contour  of 
these  figures,  their  resemblances  and  differences.  It  is 
perfectly  clear  to  them  that  the  tapestry  has  some  mean- 
ing and  that,  beside  its  immediate  significance,  it  pos- 
sesses another  less  obvious  one.  They  notice  moreover 
that  there  are  crossings  and  defects  and  missing  stitches, 
that  there  are  pieces  overlaid  and  marks  of  pauses  in 
the  work  and  returns  thereto. 


Appendix.  273 

But  those  who  use  their  imagination  are  interested  in 
the  relations  and  analogies  between  parts  of  the  tapestry 
which  are  far  distant  from  each  other  —  analogies  of 
form  and  color  and  direction  which  seem  to  them  to 
correspond  to  mysterious  and  profound  relationships. 
A  group  of  a  number  of  such  dependent  relations  con- 
stitutes the  "discovery." 

Thus  the  discovery  seems  to  us,  generally  speaking,  a 
relationship  between  distant  phenomena.  It  connects 
regions  that  are  far  apart;  between  the  primordial 
figures  others  rise  into  sight,  suggested  by  the  union  of 
corresponding  points. 

From  this  it  results  that  the  imagination  of  scientists 
invents  nothing.  But  it  associates  and  clears  up  ideas. 
That  is  especially  visible  in  the  mathematical  sciences, 
whose  adepts  suck  from  them  such  an  amount  of  satis- 
faction and  vanity  that  they  scorn  all  the  rest  of  human 
knowledge.  And  in  truth,  since  their  minds  move  along 
a  series  of  combinations  which  the  mind  itself  has 
created,  they  are  in  a  state  of  perpetual  joy  because  the 
sections  of  their  reasoning  adapt  themselves  exactly  to 
the  results  of  such  reasoning.  Their  imagination  only 
sums  up  a  set  of  facts,  but  this  gives  them  the  illusion  of 
enlarging  its  sphere,  and  they  are  not  troubled  with  those 
discordances  and  discrepancies,  those  mere  approxima- 
tions to  reality,  which  science  has  used  for  its  own  pur- 
poses during  recent  epochs. 

My  Father.  —  Yet  we  have  to  grant  their  own  gran- 
deur to  scientific  imaginations.  Men  like  Darwin  and 
Claude  Bernard  fill  an  ignoramus  like  myself  with  ad- 
miration, because  I  feel  in  their  words  the  fever  of  truth 
and  a  marvellous  scrupulosity  which  enchants  me.  They 
are  not  ashamed  to  acknowledge  their  own  mistakes. 

18 


274.  Alphonse  Daudet. 

They  will  not  hesitate  to  upset  their  system  itself  if  that 
system  does  not  correspond  with  facts. 

The  life  of  that  great  man  Darwin  is  notably  a  con- 
stant example  of  sincerity  and  kindliness ;  I  know  few 
works  as  precious  from  our  point  of  view  as  the  account 
of  the  voyage  of  the  "Beagle,"  that  voyage  which  he  made 
when  young  and  when  the  greater  part  of  his  ideas  were 
forming  themselves  in  his  powerful  brain. 

Here  we  are  present  at  their  birth.  His  imagination 
is  aroused  by  a  constant,  assiduous  and  exhaustive  obser- 
vation. His  eyes  are  not  covered  by  the  bandages  of 
routine  and  convention.  He  has  divested  himself  of 
that  fog  through  which  habit  causes  us  to  see  everything. 
He  has  preserved  untouched  \he /acuity  of  astonishment, 
that  wondrous  gift  of  infancy  which  educates  us  in  a 
short  while,  causing  us  to  acquire  more  in  a  few  years 
than  in  all  the  rest  of  our  life.  Moreover  his  uprightness 
is  absolute  ;  he  freed  himself  from  the  common  tend- 
ency which  consists  in  our  persistence  in  an  error  when- 
ever that  error  is  convenient  to  us  and  has  become  a 
habit.  "  People  do  not  make  their  ideas  over  again 
when  sixty  years  old  "  —  a  mournful  statement  which  I 
have  often  heard  repeated  and  which  fills  me  every 
time  with  indignation.  We  change  our  ideas  at  every 
age  !  Are  we  not  only  too  lucky  to  free  ourselves  from 
a  mistake  ?  And  if  we  have  shouldered  that  mistake  for 
a  great  many  years,  all  the  more  should  we  find  it  neces- 
sary to  hate  it  ! 

Darwin  fears  misty  generalizations  and  only  advances 
step  by  step.  Nevertheless  there  never  was  a  man 
more  capable  of  vast  theories  and  of  using  those  enor- 
mous nets  with  which  one  can  sweep  up  facts  in  masses 
and  therewith  astonish  the  ignorant.     There  is  no  doubt 


Appejtdix.  275 

that  he  would  have  suffered  much,  if  he  had  been  pres- 
ent to  see  the  strange  distortions  of  his  doctrine  and 
their  crude  appUcation  to  the  social,  moral  and  political 
world. 

Our  minds  are  so  at  the  mercy  of  error  !  If  error 
has  not  corrupted  the  originator  it  assails  his  imitators 
and  his  disciples.  It  is  the  fungus  that  grows  a  parasite 
upon  every  fine  act  of  the  imagination.  The  subtler, 
more  ductile  and  stronger  an  idea  is,  the  more  people 
draw  absurd  or  premature  conclusions  from  it,  so  that 
sometimes  a  truth  succumbs  under  the  weight  of  the 
follies  which  it  drags  along  in  its  wake,  follies  for  which 
it  was  never  responsible. 

We  have  seen  Darwin's  doctrines  put  to  use  as  a 
political  catch-word.  Anticlericalism  has  used  them, 
but  it  has  been  fatal.  People  have  made  the  poor  great 
genius  say  a  great  many  things  which  had  never  been 
thought  of  by  one  who  was  scrupulous  to  excess,  by  the 
man  who  waked  up  his  friends  at  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning  after  a  long  conversation  on  the  "  Sentiment  of 
the  Sublime  "  in  order  to  warn  them  that  he  had  made  a 
mistake  in  some  anecdote. 

I.  —  Science  has  before  everything  else  the  craving  for 
proofs.  It  has  need  of  long  patience  and  lays  on  the 
most  brilliant  imaginations  a  bridle  which  must  often 
become  painful. 

Moreover  the  scientist  when  he  does  make  a  discovery 
has  the  sorrow  of  having  to  say  that  he  only  makes  a 
statement  in  corroboration.  The  artist,  however,  enjoys 
the  illusion  of  creating.  As  a  matter  of  fact  this  creation 
itself  is  for  the  greater  part  a  mirage,  since  art  consists  of 
a  happy  choice  and  an  assembling  together  of  beauties 
that  have  already  existed.     The  man  of  letters  does  not 


276  Alp  house  Daudet. 

invent  a  new  sentiment  or  an  unpublished  character  any 
more  than  the  playwright  does.  The  very  rhythm  and 
cadence  which  he  gives  to  his  work,  his  style  itself, 
proceeds  from  some  one ;  let  him  be  as  personal  as  he 
chooses,  he  must  admit  an  origin  and  birth  for  it  some- 
where. Neither  painter  nor  sculptor  represents  anything 
which  did  not  exist  before  in  the  world.  It  is  somewhat 
different  in  regard  to  music.  But  looking  at  things  a 
little  closer,  music  is  the  lofty  manifestation  of  a  har- 
mony, the  models  for  which  exist  in  nature.  Neverthe- 
less the  writer,  the  painter,  the  sculptor  and  the  musician, 
whenever  their  work  bears  them  along,  believe  honestly 
that  they  are  adding  to  the  world  something  which  did 
not  exist  before  their  time. 

Sublime  illusion,  and  one  that  makes  a  man  invinci- 
ble !  It  is  very  painful  to  acknowledge  to  oneself  that 
one  lies  in  a  prison  where  one  can  but  count  the  prison 
bars.  It  is  painful  to  remember  that  the  human  mind 
has  its  laws  of  limitation  and  that  imagination  cannot 
pass  beyond  a  certain  point,  and  that  it  is  impossible  to 
break  away  from  gravitation,  whether  cosmical,  social,  or 
moral. 

If  one  looks  at  the  matter  from  that  point  of  view, 
could  one  not  believe  that  the  imagination  is  a  constant 
counsellor  of  liberty?  The  doctrine  of  Finalities  has 
served  its  time.  We  do  not  admit  that  a  given  faculty 
has  to  be  granted  to  man  for  a  definite  and  restricted 
purpose.  But  it  is  certain  that  the  moral  universe, 
exactly  like  the  material  world,  has  a  tendency  to  pre- 
serve and  continue  its  equilibrium  and  harmony.  But 
to  preserve  this,  sometimes  marvellous  sacrifices  are 
necessary. 

What  would  the  world  become  for  us  if  we  could  not 


Appendix.  277 

continue  and  modify  it  through  images?  It  is  through 
the  latter  even  more  than  through  the  association  of 
ideas  that  our  power  of  feeling  is  perpetually  awake  and 
in  action. 

Do  we  not  know  a  class  of  minds  in  whom  the  imagi- 
nation is  nothing  but  the  introduction  to  the  divine? 
After  a  period  of  darkness,  behold  us  interesting  our- 
selves again  in  the  mystical  writers  !  The  grand  breath 
that  blows  through  them  has  once  more  a  meaning  in 
our  epoch  and  the  gropings  that  go  on  about  symbols 
show  the  disquiet  of  human  thought  which  wishes  to  free 
itself  from  its  bonds. 

When  conscience  is  laid  captive  it  escapes  through 
the  imagination.  What  does  the  prisoner  do?  He 
dreams  of  the  time  when  he  is  free,  out  in  the  fields, 
beneath  the  sky,  among  the  flowers.  He  thinks  of 
everything  which  moves  and  agitates  itself  outside  the 
walls  of  his  prison.  Man  is  a  perpetual  prisoner.  Such  is 
the  law  of  his  desire  that  he  wearies  of  that  which  he  has 
obtained,  and  those  who  are  most  completely  satisfied 
are  at  the  same  time  the  most  miserable,  unless  indeed 
they  can  escape  through  the  imagination.  When  you 
applaud  reality,  you  speak  of  a  certain  kind  of  reality 
that  is  neither  flat  nor  low  nor  vulgar,  because  your  im- 
agination enlarges  it.  If  we  examine  the  world  which 
surrounds  us,  marking  its  forms  and  outlines  and  the 
signs  that  represent  its  figures,  then  it  suddenly  widens 
out.  Whether  our  tendencies  are  abstract  and  inclined 
to  be  satisfied  by  formulas,  or  concrete  and  in  love  with 
actual  examples,  the  effort  of  respiration  is  the  same 
in  all  of  us  and  we  ever  march  onward  toward  the 
heights. 

My  Father.  —  I  think  I  have  known  suffering  but  I 


278  Alphonse  DaudeL 

have  never  understood  ennui.  It  is  the  imagination  to 
which  I  owe  that ;  sincerely  do  I  mourn  for  those  who  are 
lacking  of  it.  I  am  ready  to  go  farther  —  whoever  does 
not  imagine  is  incapable  of  observing.  For  observation 
always  surpasses  reality,  lending  it  the  sounds  and  colors 
of  the  senses  belonging  to  the  observer. 

I  once  returned  from  a  journey  with  a  friend  and  we 
were  recounting  our  impressions.  When  my  turn  came 
he  did  not  interrupt  me,  but  I  saw  from  his  astonishment 
that  he  accused  me  in  his  heart  of  imposture.  Yet  both 
of  us  were  absolutely  honest.  Only,  he  had  not  re- 
marked at  all  the  things  which  struck  me  the  most  and 
he  believed  that  I  was  inventing.  A  similar  error  is 
common.  We.  are  always  ready  to  believe  that  he  lies 
who  has  seen  more  than  we  have.  In  the  eyes  of 
many  people  poets  and  visionaries  are  either  children  or 
half  idiots.  The  number  of  eyes  which  do  not  see  and 
of  ears  which  do  not  hear  and  of  fingers  which  have 
never  touched  and  felt  is  simply  immeasurable. 

Ever  since  we  have  been  talking  of  the  imagination  we 
have  failed  to  discuss  its  morbid  frontiers,  its  deviations 
and  shames.  Is  that  an  error?  It  is  my  belief  that 
monsters  do  little  in  the  way  of  instruction.  They  are 
objects  of  fright,  far  more  than  subjects  of  study,  and  the 
disgust  which  Goethe  felt  for  them  had  the  deepest  of 
reasons. 

One  of  the  advantages  of  this  admirable  faculty  is  that 
little  that  is  exciting  is  necessary  for  its  existence ;  a 
glint,  gesture  or  word  are  sufficient,  A  man  with  imagi- 
nation does  with  one  look  that  which  Cuvier  did  with 
one  bone,  he  reconstructs  an  entire  individual. 

I.  —  Indeed  it  is  extremely  curious  to  see  how  too 
many  details  and  over-richness  of  nourishment  harm  the 


Appendix.  279 

faculty  for  images.  And  is  not  that  an  indication  as  to  its 
mechanism  with  which  we  have  not  yet  occupied  ourselves  ? 

Like  the  greater  number  of  phenomena  within  and 
without  us  the  imagination  proceeds  by  whirlwinds. 
Those  who  possess  this  faculty  to  the  point  of  paroxysm 
find  that  the  slightest  cause  of  exterior  action  falling 
upon  the  brain  through  the  senses  arouses  at  once  an 
excitation  of  all  those  impressions  of  the  senses  which 
memory  had  treasured  up  heretofore.  It  has  always 
seemed  to  me  that  a  window  pane  affected  by  frost,  upon 
which  beautiful  wintry  pictures  have  suddenly  formed 
themselves,  presents  a  picture  of  what  passes  at  such 
times  in  our  mind.  There,  within  the  mystery  of  the 
nervous  cells,  a  quantity  of  unknown  laws  set  to  work  — 
attractions,  repulsions  and  combinations  of  various  kinds 
which  are  without  doubt  just  as  complicated  as  those 
that  rule  the  movement  of  the  stars. 

But  it  is  easy  to  distinguish  a  rapid  imagination 
and  a  slow  imagination.  The  former  is  in  perpetual 
observation ;  the  second  is  a  mechanism  apart.  All  of 
a  sudden,  thoughts  and  embryonic  thoughts,  sensations 
and  memories  which  have  remained  benumbed  within 
the  crypts  of  our  substance  are  aroused  by  new  impres- 
sions. Then  slow  and  tenacious  figures  form  themselves 
in  the  spirit,  so  tenacious  that  they  become  in  some 
human  \>t'va%%  fixed  ideas.  Is  it  not  in  these  phenomena 
of  slow  imagination  that  we  should  look  for  the  key  to 
craziness,  concerning  which  we  still  possess  only  very 
vague  indications? 

But  quite  apart  from  craziness,  the  artistic  life  and 
more  especially  the  life  of  the  man  of  letters  give  us 
daily  examples  of  the  rapid  and  slow  imagination,  for 
the  two  are  associated  in  the  work  of  composition. 


28o  Alphonse  Daudet. 

My  Father.  —  What  a  singular  study  it  would  be  if 
one  were  to  work  at  the  state  of  the  mind  whilst  imagin- 
ation is  in  action ! 

It  is  impossible  for  me  to  work  when  noise  goes  on. 
At  that  moment  my  brain  is  in  such  a  state  of  super- 
excitement  that  the  slightest  sound  and  the  smallest 
change  in  light  upsets  my  thought  and  carries  me  away 
from  my  point.  That  mechanism  of  which  you  speak 
seizes  everything  which  comes  to  it  through  the  senses. 

There  are  others  on  the  contrary  who  are  able  to  ab- 
stract themselves  completely  in  the  midst  of  tumult,  of  the 
coming  and  going  of  people  and  of  children.  It  seems 
as  if  a  deadened  wall  had  been  lowered  between  their 
imagination  and  external  life. 

The  choice  of  a  word  is  an  exhaustive  operation 
whenever  we  wish  to  seize  and  hold  a  sensation  as 
closely  as  possible.  We  make  an  exact  image  of  it  to 
ourselves  and  that  alone  is  a  fatigue.  Then  we  compare 
to  it  the  various  words,  adjectives  or  nouns  which  mem- 
ory brings  to  us  and  we  try  them  by  the  eye  and  the 
ear  just  as  a  jeweller  tries  his  precious  stones.  A  close 
adaptation  of  a  word  gives  a  particular  kind  of  joy  which 
all  writers  know  and  the  reader  will  find  for  himself. 
This  is  the  most  wearisome  of  work. 

For  the  imagination  is  a  machine  which  requires 
special  care.  The  livelier  and  more  easily  excitable  it  is, 
the  more  delicate  its  springs  may  be,  the  more  dangerous 
is  it  to  strain  it  too  much.  Woe  to  those  who  hope  to 
inflame  it  through  poisons  !  The  progress  of  the  latter 
is  fatal  —  a  fraudulent  excitement  which  makes  us  think 
the  least  effort  sublime,  and  then  a  depression  which 
makes  us  incapable  of  realizing  the  effort.  One  of  the 
laws  of  images  consists  in  this,  that  normal  life  alone 


Appendix.  281 

must  bring  it  to  the  spirit.  And  that  is  done  without 
our  voHtion.     That  is  not  subject  to  rules. 

The  hygiene  of  the  imagination  is  simple.  When  it 
is  fatigued  it  demands  repose  from  its  own  action  and 
its  repose  consists  in  diversion.  The  moral  occupations 
of  life  rest  and  quiet  it.  How  many  illustrious  writers 
have  there  not  been,  who  have  paid  with  their  life  or 
their  reason  for  some  abuse  of  that  faculty  which  is  our 
tool,  and  from  which  one  should  not  ask  too  much  ! 

I  have  talked  about  diversion.  That  is  likewise  the 
greatest  remedy  for  the  too  great  persistence  of  images. 
Now  that  shows  us,  those  are  not  the  most  singular  scenes 
of  nature,  nor  the  most  remarkable  episodes  of  life 
which  seize  upon  and  fill  the  memory  most.  Often 
some  word  or  gesture,  some  insignificant  act  remains  in 
our  mind  to  torture  it.  Is  not  this  a  proof  that  without 
our  own  volition  our  sensibility  undergoes  plenty  of 
alternatives  which  offer  a  chance  or  destiny  to  our 
images?  That  which  finds  us  in  a  state  of  receptivity 
enters  and  penetrates  us  deeply.  That  which  finds  us 
in  a  state  of  closedness  or  of  half-closure,  carves  itself 
in  but  shallowly  and  is  quickly  effaced. 

lEon  a.  DAUDET. 


THE    DAUDET    FAMILY. 


MY   BROTHER   AND   I. 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF   INFANCY  AND  YOUTH. 


By  ERNEST  DAUDET. 


PREFACE. 


To  THE  Reader  : 

Alphonse  Daudet,  to  whom  these  recollections 
are  consecrated,  is  to-day  (1881)  at  the  height  of 
his  renown.  His  works  are  fought  for  by  pub- 
lishers and  newspapers  and  are  translated  into  all 
languages ;  they  are  popular  in  London  as  well 
as  in  Paris,  at  Vienna  as  at  Berlin,  in  New  York  as 
in  St.  Petersburg.  If  there  were  any  need  of  justi- 
fication for  these  intimate  and  personal  notes  which 
you  are  about  to  read,  I  would  not  care  to  invoke 
any  other  excuse  than  this  very  legitimate  popu- 
larity which  is  so  perfectly  adequate  to  explain 
their  appearance. 

As  to  the  special  attraction  which  they  may 
offer  to  readers  because  of  the  relationship  which 
connects  the  one  who  writes  them  with  him  who  is 
the  object  of  their  appearance,  I  have  but  a  word 
to  say.  Ever  since  Alphonse  Daudet  was  born, 
life  has  hardly  separated  us  to  any  extent.  I  am 
perfectly  convinced  that  no  one  is  in  a  position 
to  speak  of  the  man  and  the  writer  with  greater 
exactness  than  I,  unless  indeed  it  were  his  own 
self;  and  I  have  besides  the  advantage  of  being 
able  to  state  what  certainly  he  would  never  dare 
to  mention  of  himself. 


286,  Preface. 

For  a  long  time  now  my  mind  has  been  besieged 
with  the  temptation  to  give  this  account  and  to 
render  precise  and  fix  various  recollections  from 
which  Alphonse  himself  has  often  drawn  inspira- 
tion for  his  novels  and  studies.  I  have  said  to 
myself  that  at  a  time  when  the  novel  tends  to 
draw  its  nourishment  more  and  more  from  actual 
facts ;  at  a  time  when  the  need  for  sincerity  is 
imposed  imperiously  upon  whomsoever  holds  a 
pen,  such  true  notes  as  these  concerning  an 
already  distant  past  would  have  hardly  less  chance 
to  please  the  public  than  some  work  of  fiction 
which  only  owes  its  success  to  the  effort  its  author 
has  made  to  reproduce  mankind  and  life  exactly. 

It  is  under  a  form  of  this  kind  that  the  mental 
siege  of  which  I  speak  has  for  a  long  time  involved 
my  mind.  Perhaps  I  would  have  overcome  it  and 
would  never  have  got  the  better  of  my  scruples, 
had  it  not  been  for  the  endeavors  of  certain  friends 
who  have  undertaken  to  demonstrate  to  me  that  I 
owed  these  documentary  proofs  concerning  my 
brother  to  the  history  of  our  literature  of  to-day,  and 
that  I  was  bound  to  write  my  account,  even  though 
I  should  postpone  its  publication  indefinitely. 

So  then,  I  began  the  work  as  if  it  were  some- 
thing which  was  destined  never  to  leave  the  circle 
of  our  intimate  friends.  But  destiny  had  decided 
otherwise  in  the  matter ;  hardly  was  it  done,  when 
an  affectionate  piece  of  violence  gave  it  to  the 
public  under  the  title  Alphonse  Daudet  by  Ernest 
Dandet. 

Perhaps    I    may  be    permitted    to    say  that   its 


Preface.  287 

success  was  very  great  among  the  readers  of  the 
NoHvelle  Revue.  On  the  other  hand,  my  brother, 
whom  I  had  not  been  able  to  consult,  because  at 
that  time  we  were  far  apart  one  from  another,  he 
being  in  Switzerland  and  I  in  Normandy,  was 
somewhat  moved  by  perceiving  that  he  was  being 
treated  "  as  people  only  treat  the  dead."  He 
wrote  me :  "  I  am  alive,  and  very  much  alive,  and 
you  are  much  too  quick  to  make  me  take  my 
place  in  history.  I  know  some  people  who  will 
say  that  I  have  caused  a  piece  of  self-advertisement 
to  be  made  by  my  brother." 

Whether  well-grounded  or  not,  the  objection 
came  rather  late.  The  book  was  launched  and 
there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  let  it  sail.  So  that 
is  what  I  have  done,  in  perfect  agreement  with 
Alphonse  Daudet,  after  having  at  his  own  desire 
suppressed  many  warm  eulogies  of  his  talent, 
which,  from  my  fraternal  pen,  carried  with  them 
no  authority,  and  after  having  changed  the  original 
title  which  he  thought  too  loud.  He  advised  me 
to  use  that  which  is  seen  on  the  cover  of  this 
volume  {Moil  Frkre  et  Moi  ;  Souvenirs  d' Enfance 
et  de  Jeimesse)  and  although  I  have  always  pro- 
fessed the  most  profound  disgust  for  the  "  moi," 
still,  I  had  so  many  excuses  to  make  for  my 
audacious  undertaking  that  I  felt  constrained  to 
accede  to  his  wish  without  discussion. 

That,  in  brief,  is  the  story  of  my  book.  I  owe 
the  explanation  to  the  public,  to  whose  good  will 
I  confide  it.  I  will  only  add  one  word  —  I  must 
be  forgiven  if  I  place  myself  on  the  stage  side  by 


288  Preface. 

side  with  my  brother.  Our  lives  were  so  closely 
united  that  I  would  not  be  able  to  speak  of  him 
without  also  speaking  of  myself.  I  have  tried  to 
do  it  with  discretion,  because  these  pages  are 
before  everything  else  inspired  by  the  greatest 
brotherly  tenderness  and  by  no  less  Hvely  an 
admiration. 

E.  D. 


MY   BROTHER  AND   I. 

CHAPTER   I. 

The  name  Daudet  is  pretty  widely  spread  in 
Languedoc.  Some  of  the  families  which  bear  it 
have  suppressed  the  last  letter;  such  are  Daud6 
d'Alzon,  Daude  de  Lavalette,  Daude  de  Labarthe. 
It  is  often  found  in  the  Lozere  district  at  Mende 
and  at  Marvejols  under  both  forms  of  writing. 
In  the  seventeenth  century  it  was  brought  before 
the  public  by  an  engraver,  an  art  critic,  an  engi- 
neer and  two  Protestant  theologians;  a  certain 
Chevalier  Daudet  wrote  and  caused  to  be  printed 
an  account  of  a  trip  made  by  Louis  XV  to 
Strasburg. 

Have  these  Daud^s  or  Daudets,  who  were  all 
originally  from  the  Cevennes,  a  common  origin? 
It  is  to  be  supposed  they  have.  What  is  more 
assured,  however,  is  that  the  branch  from  which 
we,  Alphonse  and  I,  issued,  flourished  in  a  little 
village  called  Concoules  a  few  leagues  from  Ville- 
fort  in  the  Lozere  district  at  the  spot  where  that 
department  joins  with  the  Ardeche  and  the  Gard. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution  our  grand- 
father, who  was  a  peasant  with  a  mind  that  was 
rather  broad  than  cultivated,  had  come  down  from 

19 


290  Alphonse  Daudet. 

those  wild  mountains  with  his  brother  to  estabhsh 
himself  at  Nimes,  in  order  to  work  at  the  trade 
of  "  tafifetassier  "  or  silk  weaver.  He  was  called 
Jacques  and  his  brother  Claude.  A  royalist  of 
the  most  violent  kind,  Claude  was  massacred  in 
1790  during  the  bloody  days  of  the  "bagarre;  " 
and  Jacques  himself  very  nearly  met  his  death  in 
conditions  hardly  less  tragical. 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  the  Days  of  Terror.  The 
gallows  remained  permanently  standing  on  the 
terrace  at  Nimes.  In  a  single  day  thirty  inhab- 
itants of  Beaucaire  were  made  to  mount  the 
scaffold,  charged  with  being  accomplices  of  the 
royalist  conspirators  in  the  Vivarais;  they  were 
artisans  for  the  most  part,  since  it  was  a  curious 
fact  that  in  the  South  the  Jacobins  seemed  to 
recruit  their  victims  by  preference  from  the  folk. 
These  wretched  people  went  to  their  death  inton- 
ing the  Miserere.  Having  only  recently  come 
down  from  his  hill  country,  Jacques  Daudet  hap- 
pened to  be  on  their  path  and  his  soul  opened  out 
with  pity  whilst  his  eyes  filled  with  tears,  — 

"  Ah  !  li  paouri  gent !  "  ("  Oh  !  the  poor  crea- 
tures !  ")  cried  he. 

At  once  he  was  surrounded  by  the  men  belong- 
ing to  the  escort  of  the  victims,  who  maltreated 
and  hustled  him  into  the  melancholy  procession 
whilst  threatening  to  execute  him  without  process 
of  law.  Luckily  one  of  them  who  was  less  ex- 
cited than  the  others  urged  him  to  fly  and  pro- 
tected his  escape.  Our  good  Cevenol  peasant 
hastened  to  disappear  and  profited  by  the  lesson ; 


My  Brother  and  I.  291 

because  thereafter  he  was  never  heard  uttering  his 
sentiments  aloud  in  the  streets. 

The  flight  of  time  took  those  melancholy  years 
away  with  it.  Under  the  Consulate,  Jacques 
Daudet  is  found  at  the  head  of  an  important 
weaving-works,  which  the  large  merchants  of  the 
city  rarely  allowed  to  stand  still.  At  that  period 
the  industry  of  silk-weaving  was  flourishing  in 
Nimes.  It  supplied  the  stuff  for  the  demand 
for  cravats,  skirts,  scarfs  and  other  fine  lace-like 
fabrics  which  in  their  perfection  were  quite  equal 
to  the  finest  products  of  the  factories  of  Lyon. 
It  nourished,  throughout  the  city  and  the  villages 
round  about,  a  hundred  different  trades,  and  it 
occupied  a  shining  position  side  by  side  with 
that  tremendous  output  of  carpets,  shawls  and 
scarfs,  which  carried  the  name  of  the  commerce 
of  Nimes  as  far  as  the  Orient. 

Very  soon  Jacques  Daudet  became  weary  of 
being  nothing  but  a  workman.  He  established  a 
sales-house  and  was  not  long  in  putting  together 
a  little  fortune.  In  the  mean  time  he  had  mar- 
ried, and  two  sons  and  three  daughters  were  born 
of  this  union.  It  was  his  fourth  child  Vincent 
who  was  the  father  of  Alphonse  Daudet  and 
myself 

At  twenty  years  a  handsome  man  was  that  same 
Vincent,  with  his  Bourbon  head,  black  hair,  rosy 
complexion  and  eyes  well  forward  in  his  face, 
pinched  into  his  tightly-fitting  frock-coat  and 
wearing  a  white  cravat  like  a  magistrate  —  a  cus- 
tom which  he  kept  up  throughout  his  life !     His 


2g2  Alphonse  Daudet. 

education  had  not  passed  the  first  smatterings  in 
Latin,  because  his  father  had  "  harnessed  him  to 
business  "  as  early  as  the  age  of  sixteen.  But  he 
had  moved  about  the  world,  namely,  Normandy, 
la  Vendee  and  Brittany,  which  was  the  world  at 
that  time,  driving  with  his  own  hands  a  wagon 
crammed  full  of  the  output  of  his  father's  looms, 
which  he  sold  in  the  towns  to  the  larger  mer- 
chants of  those  distant  lands.  He  travelled  night 
and  day,  winter  and  summer,  with  two  pistols  in  a 
little  green  bag  to  defend  himself  against  high- 
waymen. 

The  commercial  customs  suited  to  an  epoch 
which  knew  nothing  of  the  telegraph  or  of  rail- 
ways are  entirely  transformed  to-day.  But  they 
had  the  merit  of  forming  a  man  quickly  when  in 
contact  with  the  difficulties,  adventures  and  re- 
sponsibilities which  they  engendered.  So,  then,  at 
twenty  years  of  age  Vincent  Daudet  was  a  fellow 
all  fire  and  flames,  but  prudent  and  cautious  — 
very  Catholic  and  Royalist,  it  is  hardly  necessary 
to  say !  —  and  in  every  respect  worthy  of  the 
excellent  people  who  had  brought  him  into  the 
world ;  besides,  he  was  extremely  fascinating, 
which  does  no  harm ! 


My  Brother  and  I.  293 


CHAPTER  II. 

At  that  time,  about  1829,  the  house  of  Daudet 
was  in  constant  business  relations  with  the  house  of 
Reynaud,  from  which  it  bought  the  hanks  of  silk 
thread  needed  for  the  fabrication  of  silks.  That 
was  a  famous  stock,  too,  was  the  Reynaud  stock  — 
as  we  shall  soon  see.  Its  cradle  can  still  be  seen  in 
the  mountains  of  the  Ardeche  in  the  shape  of  an 
ancient  and  comfortable  house  called  La  Vignasse 
which  is  built  on  a  heap  of  broken  crags  among 
chestnut  and  mulberry  groves,  overlooking  that 
valley  of  Jal^s,  where,  from  1790  to  1792,  the 
Royalist  assemblies  took  place  which  were  called 
together  by  the  Abbe  Claude  Allier  and  the  Count 
de  Saillans,  who  were  the  agents  for  the  exiled 
princes. 

La  Vignasse  had  been  bought  the  loth  of  June, 
1645,  by  Jean  Reynaud  the  son  of  Sebastien  Rey- 
naud of  Boisseron.  At  that  time  it  was  a  little  do- 
main whither  Jean  Reynaud  went  to  establish  him- 
self after  his  marriage ;  on  it  he  built  the  dwelling 
which  still  belongs  to  his  descendants.  From  1752 
to  1773  one  of  his  descendants,  our  great-grand- 
father, had  six  sons  and  three  daughters.  Of  the 
latter,  two  married,  the  third  entered  the  convent 


294  Alp  house  Daudef. 

of  Notre-Dame  de  Largentiere,  where  her  grand- 
aunt  on  the  maternal  side,  Catherine  de  Tavernos, 
was  at  that  time  the  Lady  Superior.  As  to  the  six 
sons,  one  of  whom  was  our  grandfather,  for  the 
most  part  they  had  adventures  which  are  worth 
noting  here. 

The  eldest,  Jean,  remained  in  his  father's  house 
and  produced  a  stock  of  excellent  people ;  his 
grandson,  Arsene  Reynaud,  resides  there  still,  full 
of  life  and  health  in  spite  of  his  great  age,  honored, 
highly  esteemed  and  giving  to  all  about  him  an 
example  of  the  most  masculine  virtues. 

The  second,  William,  "  the  Russian  uncle,"  went 
to  London  at  the  Revolution  and  established  there 
a  fine  business  in  Parisian  articles.  The  French 
exiles  having  been  expelled  from  England,  he  left 
for  Hamburg,  whence  he  pushed  forward  to  Russia 
and  transferred  his  business  to  St.  Petersburg.  By 
the  use  of  tact  he  succeeded  in  having  himself 
named  as  a  furnisher  to  the  Court,  and  he  had 
quickly  put  together  a  fortune  reckoned  at  300,000 
francs,  which  was  a  very  considerable  sum  for  that 
time. 

Through  what  causes  did  he  find  himself  mixed 
up  with  the  first  conspiracy  against  Paul  L  ?  We 
have  never  been  able  to  learn.  That  conspiracy 
having  failed,  our  uncle  William  had  to  listen  to  a 
verdict  against  himself  which  confiscated  all  his 
property  and  ordered  his  banishment  to  Siberia. 
Thither  was  he  led  on  foot  and  in  chains  with  the 
greater  number  of  his  accomplices.  At  first  he 
was  luckier  than  the  others  and  succeeded  in  es- 


My  Brother  and  I.  295 

caping  by  mingling  with  the  following  of  an  am- 
bassador whom  the  Russian  Government  was  send- 
ing to  China,  Unfortunately  he  was  recognized  at 
the  very  moment  they  were  crossing  the  frontier 
and  sent  back  into  Siberia.  There  he  would  prob- 
ably have  died  but  for  the  success  of  the  second 
conspiracy  against  the  Czar  Paul,  who,  as  will  be 
remembered,  was  strangled  in  1801  ;  this  put  an 
end  to  his  exile.  Alexander  I.  signed  his  reprieve 
and  returned  his  fortune  to  him. 

Our  "  Russian  uncle  "  returned  to  France  after 
the  Restoration  and  settled  in  Paris  where  he  died 
in  1 8 19,  leaving  all  his  property  to  his  house- 
keeper, a  certain  Catherine  Dropski,  who  lived 
close  to  him  for  twenty  years;  she  disappeared 
suddenly  without  giving  time  to  the  plundered 
family  to  make  demands  on  her  for  the  property. 

The  third  son  of  Jean  Reynaud  was  called 
Frangois.  He  it  is  that  we  still  designate  under  the 
name  of  "our  uncle  the  Abb6."  A  fine  type  of  priest 
and  citizen  was  that  Abb^  Reynaud,  concerning 
whom  his  great-nephews  have  a  right  to  speak  with 
no  little  pride.  Rarely  does  a  man  unite  in  himself 
more  natural  gifts.  Those  who  knew  him  never 
pronounce  his  name  without  a  tone  of  respectful 
admiration. 

Wishing  to  enter  the  Church,  he  took  his  first 
studies  with  the  Oratorians  at  Aix,  intending  to 
remain  with  that  famous  congregation  and  devote 
himself  to  instruction ;  but  soon  recalled  by  his 
bishop,  who  wished  to  keep  him  among  the  clergy 
of  his  diocese,  he  continued  his  studies  at  the  sem- 


296  Alphonse  Daudet, 

inary  of  Valence,  whence  he  departed  in  1789  to 
occupy  a  modest  curacy  in  the  Vivarais.  Having 
refused  to  give  his  adhesion  to  the  civil  constitution 
of  the  clergy,  but  wishing  to  take  no  part  in  the 
plots  which  were  being  woven  by  others  round 
about  him,  he  left  in  disguise  for  Paris,  intending 
to  live  with  his  brother  Baptiste,  of  whom  I  shall 
presently  speak. 

Very  soon  after  his  arrival  in  Paris  he  was 
present  at  a  meeting  of  the  Convention  in  which 
very  rigorous  measures  were  voted  to  prevent 
suspected  men  from  leaving  the  capital.  Without 
waiting  for  the  close  of  that  meeting,  he  walked  off 
and  took  the  stage  coach  to  Rouen.  A  few  days 
later  he  was  in  London,  whither  he  caused  his 
brother  William  to  come  over  after  him. 

During  the  long  stay  which  he  made  in  England 
our  uncle  the  Abbe  lived  apart  from  the  society  of 
the  exiles,  whose  attitude  and  proceedings  he  al- 
ways disavowed.  Having  exhausted  his  means 
and  become  a  teacher,  he  entered  as  instructor  the 
family  of  a  scientific  man  who  was  educating  a 
small  number  of  young  people  belonging  to  the 
aristocracy  of  Great  Britain.  He  gave  that  finish 
there  to  his  own  studies  which  was  lacking  to  them, 
and  studied  especially  the  English  language,  with 
which  he  soon  became  so  familiar  that  he  was  able 
to  teach  it  in  London  itself  During  that  stay  he 
was  the  hero  of  an  adventure  concerning  which  he 
never  spoke  except  with  profound  emotion. 

He  had  thought  it  his  duty  to  conceal  his  pro- 
fession of  priest  from  the  people  with  whom  he 


My  Brother  and  I.  297 

entertained  social  relations.  There  was  a  young, 
beautiful,  distinguished  and  rich  girl  in  one  of  the 
families  in  which  he  was  received.  Touched  by 
his  natural  grace,  his  gentle  look  and  particularly 
by  the  dignity  of  his  life,  she  took  a  liking  to  the 
exile.  As  he  did  not  seem  to  understand  the  senti- 
ments which  he  had  inspired,  she  begged  her  father 
to  make  her  avowal  to  him,  offering  to  follow  him 
to  France  whenever  he  should  return  thither. 
Everything  that  could  be  presented  to  flatter  the 
imagination  of  a  young  man,  vistas  of  a  brilliant 
future,  the  delights  of  a  deep  love,  all  were  put  in 
motion  to  persuade  Francois,  but  his  conscience 
dictated  other  duties  to  him  and  without  betraying 
his  secret  he  refused  the  happiness  offered  him.  In 
that  simple  episode  is  there  not  a  delightful  subject 
for  a  novel  ?  At  last  his  term  of  exile  was  at  an 
end. 

Under  the  Consulate,  Abbe  Reynaud  was  struck 
from  the  list  of  exiles.  He  returned  to  France 
resolved  to  continue  that  career  of  instruction 
which  his  exile  had  opened  for  him.  Called  to 
take  charge  of  the  College  of  Aubenas,  he  stayed 
there  a  while.  In  181 1  he  was  named  as  principal 
of  the  College  at  Alais.  He  lived  there  to  the  day 
of  his  death,  that  is  to  say,  for  twenty-four  years 
more,  always  a  fervent  university  man,  deeply 
attached  to  the  college,  which  he  had  reorganized 
and  rendered  flourishing,  and,  rather  than  to  leave  it 
refusing  the  highest  positions,  even  the  episcopate. 
One  of  his  biographers  has  said  that  he  caused  to 
live  again  the  picture  of  good  Abb^  Rollin. 


298  Alphonse  Daudet. 

He  was  sweetness  and  urbanity  in  action.  His 
tolerance  was  equal  to  his  liberalism,  and  in  a 
country  where  religious  differences  have  engen- 
dered so  many  evils  he  practised  this  maxim : 
In  matters  of  faith,  constraint  can  never  produce 
anything  but  bitter  fruit. 

During  the  Ministry  of  Villele  he  had  to  under- 
take a  long  campaign  against  the  Jesuits,  who 
wanted  to  take  his  college  away  from  him.  In 
order  to  make  him  leave  his  post,  they  had  re- 
course to  the  most  unworthy  manceuvres ;  but  his 
unconquerable  energy  was  equal  to  their  greatest 
efforts  and  victory  perched  upon  his  banner.  An 
heroic  end  was  fore-ordained  for  such  a  life  as  his. 
On  the  1st  of  July  1825  an  epidemic  of  cholera 
sprang  up  in  Alais  and  became  so  violent  that  it 
was  necessary  to  close  the  college.  At  that  time 
Abbe  Reynaud  was  71  years  old.  Before  they  left 
the  college  the  professors  came  to  him  and  begged 
him  to  leave  Alais. 

'*  It  is  my  duty  to  stick  to  my  post  since  I  am 
a  priest,"  answered  he,  "  where  there  are  afflicted 
people  to  console  and  wretched  ones  to  help.  If 
I  went  away  I  should  dishonor  myself;  I  should 
cover  myself  with  dishonor  no  less  than  an  officer 
might  who  before  the  battle  should  abandon  his 
flag  and  soldiers." 

The  very  next  day  he  entered  the  hospital  and 
settled  himself  there ;  for  two  months  he  gave  him- 
self up  to  nursing  with  the  most  admirable  devotion. 
On  the  loth  of  September  he  was  suddenly  stricken 
by  the  disease  in  his  turn  and  died  two  days  after, 


My  Brother  and  I.  299 

victim  of  a  duty  which  his  age  might  have  per- 
mitted him  to  evade,  instead  of  fulfilling  it  with  so 
courageous  an  ardor. 

The  name  of  Abb6  Reynaud  has  continued  pop- 
ular at  Alais,  and  if  I  have  been  somewhat  prolix 
concerning  the  reasons  for  that  popularity,  this 
comes  from  the  fact  that  it  recalls  the  kindly  man 
who  opened  the  gates  of  a  college  to  his  grand- 
nephew  Alphonse  Daudet,  when,  long  afterward, 
hardly  16  years  old  at  the  time  and  yet  obliged  to 
earn  his  own  livelihood,  the  latter  went  to  that 
college  to  beg  for  a  place  as  schoolmaster.  Read 
again  an  account  of  the  sufferings  of  Le  Petit 
Chose  when  he  became  an  usher  at  the  college  of 
Sarlande. 

I  have  still  to  speak  of  the  other  three  Reynaud 
sons  and  will  do  so  briefly. 

Baptiste,  one  of  them,  left  at  an  early  age  for 
Paris.  Having  entered  a  shop  as  apprentice  with 
the  hat-maker  for  the  court,  the  celebrated  Le- 
moine,  his  intelligence  and  handsome  appearance 
caused  him  to  be  used  for  "  outside."  It  was  he 
who  went  to  the  Tuileries  to  try  on  the  bonnets  for 
the  queen  and  princesses,  and  in  the  same  way  he 
went  to  the  social  queens  in  fashion  at  the  moment 
and  to  the  fops  of  the  period.  In  such  surround- 
ings he  quickly  acquired  a  most  varied  store  of 
information  and  was  soon  thoroughly  acquainted 
with  the  gossip  of  the  fashionable  society  of  the 
day.  And,  indeed,  how  many  recollections  did 
his  memory  not  preserve  concerning  that  famous 
time ! 


300  ,  Alphonse  DaudeU 

Uncle  Baptiste  is  the  only  one  of  our  great-uncles 
whom  Alphonse  and  I  have  known.  He  was  al- 
ready an  old  man,  but  as  clean,  fresh  and  rosy  as 
in  the  days  of  his  handsome  youth,  speaking  little 
however  of  his  past  in  our  presence,  since  we  were 
only  children.  What  we  know  about  him  is  derived 
from  the  stories  told  to  the  family.  He  liked  to 
talk  about  his  sojourn  in  Paris  and  the  people  with 
whom  he  was  more  or  less  intimately  acquainted, 
amongst  others  Collin  d'Harleville,  as  well  as  about 
his  campaigns  as  a  volunteer  in  the  army  under 
Dumouriez, 

There  is  mention  of  uncle  Baptiste  in  Le  Petit 
Chose.  But  this  character  in  a  novel  had  nothing 
in  common  with  our  ancestor  save  the  name.  Al- 
phonse Daudet  built  him  up  out  of  bits  and  pieces, 
that  is  to  say,  out  of  various  characteristics  bor- 
rowed from  the  family. 

The  two  younger  brothers  of  Baptiste  who  were 
called  Louis  and  Antoine  were  far  from  having  a 
destiny  so  adventurous  as  their  elders.  Both  of 
them  took  wives  in  the  Vivarais  not  far  from  the 
paternal  mansion.  Louis  stayed  there,  but  An- 
toine, he  who  was  our  maternal  grandfather,  having 
become  a  widower,  left  the  country  toward  the  end 
of  the  century  in  order  to  go  to  Nimes,  where  he 
established  himself  and  created  an  important  house 
for  the  buying  and  sale  of  silks. 

At  that  time  the  growers  of  silk-worms  in  the 
C6vennes  and  the  Vivarais  and  the  little  silk-spin- 
ners went  to  Nimes  and  offered  their  products  there. 
For  several  days  at  a  time  they  might  be  seen 


My  Brother  and  I.  301 

wandering  about  the  town  in  their  raw-silk  coats 
with  very  short  tails,  their  thick  stockings  of  black 
wool,  their  heavy  iron-bound  shoes,  and  their  hair 
in  a  cue,  doing  impromptu  business  on  this  moving 
market.  In  such  cases  every  operation  was  done 
in  solid  financial  fashion  with  fine  big  silver  pieces, 
and,  since  a  kilogram  of  silk  was  worth  from  50  to 
80  francs,  there  used  to  be  a  clinking  of  gold  and 
silver  pieces  in  the  shops  where  the  mountaineers 
bought  their  goods  which  would  have  made  Har- 
pagon  rub  his  hands  with  delight.  Then,  the  sales 
finished,  these  sturdy  fellows  set  out  upon  their 
return,  bowed  down  beneath  the  weight  of  their 
parcels,  this  one  to  Vigan,  that  one  to  Largentiere 
and  the  other  to  Villefort. 

This  industry,  which  for  a  long  while  enriched 
the  inhabitants  of  Languedoc,  Provence  and  the 
Comtat,  is  quite  dead  to-day,  killed  by  the  silk- 
worm cholera.  The  crisis  which  was  the  ruin  of 
the  south  of  France  had  its  origin  there.  Then 
there  came  various  chemical  discoveries  that  put 
a  stop  to  the  production  of  madder,  which  was 
such  a  flourishing  one  in  the  department  of  Vau- 
cluse,  and  finally  the  phylloxera  gave  it  the  last 
blow.  The  most  firmly  established  fortunes  were 
not  able  to  stand  the  strain.  But  at  the  moment 
concerning  which  we  speak  people  were  very  far 
from  foreseeing  such  catastrophes,  and  the  South, 
like  all  of  France,  allowed  itself  to  be  carried  along 
by  the  profitable  commercial  movement  which 
reached  its  greatest  development  under  the  Res- 
toration. 


302  Alphonse  Daudet. 

Antoine  Raynaud  was  one  of  those  in  Ntmes 
who  knew  best  how  to  profit  by  it.  He  had  be- 
come one  of  the  most  important  silk-buyers  in  the 
South.  He  then  sold  again  to  the  large  weavers 
of  Nimes,  Avignon  and  Lyon,  supporting  the 
rivalship  of  similar  products  from  Lombardy  and 
Piedmont  in  all  these  different  markets.  In  this 
trade  he  accumulated  a  fine  fortune,  assisted  by 
my  grandmother,  for  toward  1798  he  had  married 
again  and  this  time  with  a  young  woman  born 
like  him  in  the  Vivarais,  whom  he  had  met  when 
going  to  visit  his  elder  brother  at  La  Vignasse. 


My  Brother  and  I.  303 


CHAPTER  III. 

Our  grandmother  died  several  years  before  my 
birth,  but  I  have  heard  her  spoken  of  often  enough 
to  assert  that  she  was  not  an  ordinary  person.  A 
plebeian  with  warm  blood,  and  a  convinced  Royal- 
ist who  had  been  tried  by  the  harsh  suffering 
under  the  Terror,  she  recalled  by  her  beauty,  her 
sculpturesque  forms  and  her  eyes  widely  carved 
in  their  sockets  some  of  the  portraits  of  the  painter 
David. 

When  Antoine  Reynaud  knew  her  he  was  twenty 
years  old ;  she  too  was  a  widow,  her  first  husband 
having  been  shot  in  one  of  the  tumults  in  the 
Lozere,  to  appease  which  the  Convention  sent 
thither  one  of  its  members,  Chateauneuf-Randon. 

One  son  remained  from  the  first  marriage.  She 
had  undergone  most  frightful  perils  with  him.  De- 
nounced as  a  Royalist  at  the  same  time  with  her 
husband,  she  had  fled  for  safety  to  Nimes,  where 
a  part  of  her  family  lived,  whilst  he  escaped  the 
other  way.  She  lived  there  in  utmost  quiet  and 
hidden  away,  awaiting  the  end  of  the  black  days 
of  Terror.  One  morning  she  had  the  imprudence 
to  go  out  with  her  child  on  her  arm,  and  destiny 


304  Alphonse  DaudeL 

fore-ordained  that  she  should  come  across  the 
march  of  the  Goddess  Reason,  who  was  being 
carried  in  solemn  procession  through  the  streets; 
moreover,  fate  must  needs  decree  that  the  citizen- 
ess  to  whom  this  lofty  but  transitory  dignity  was 
awarded  should  recognize  our  grandmother  in  the 
street !  As  far  off  as  she  could  see  her  she  began 
to  call  to  her,  screaming  out :  — 

"  Frangoise  !     On  your  knees  !  " 

My  grandmother  was  hardly  seventeen  years  old 
at  the  time  and  was  gifted  with  quick  repartee 
and  a  turn  for  irony.  To  this  order  on  the  part  of 
the  Goddess  Reason  she  replied  with  a  gesture 
fitter  for  a  street  boy.  The  mob  rushed  upon  her 
crying,  "  Zou  !  Zou  !  " 

She  took  flight  through  the  town,  pressing  her 
child  to  her  breast  and  reached  a  suburb  where 
she  managed  to  return  to  her  house  by  way  of 
gardens,  but  only  by  passing  along  the  narrow  rim 
of  a  cistern  at  the  greatest  risk  of  falling  in.  As 
she  said  later  in  life:  "No  cat  could  have  done 
what  I  did  that  day !  " 

For  the  moment  she  had  saved  her  life,  but  too 
many  perils  were  about  and  her  safety  demanded 
that  she  should  not  remain  longer  in  Nimes.  That 
very  evening  she  left  for  the  Vivarais. 

She  had  to  make  part  of  the  trip  on  foot,  march- 
ing by  short  stages  and  finding  refuge  at  the  end 
of  her  heavy  tramps  in  some  farm  or  in  the  house 
of  one  of  those  curates  of  the  constitution  to  whom 
kindly  souls  recommended  her.  It  was  during  this 
march,  whilst   shaken   by  the  most  cruel  fits  of 


My  Brother  and  I.  305 

anguish,  that  she  heard  of  the  death  of  her 
husband. 

The  night  before  she  had  arrived  at  a  wretched 
village  called  Les  Mages  and  asked  for  a  lodging  at 
the  priest's  house;  on  entering  the  bed-chamber 
which  had  been  set  apart  for  her  she  had  been  im- 
pressed by  a  presentiment  of  sorrow.  The  ceme- 
tery lay  immediately  beneath  her  windows  and  the 
moon  outlined  the  crosses  on  the  tombs  in  black 
against  the  gray.    It  was  impossible  for  her  to  sleep. 

Then  the  child  she  was  suckling  was  seized  by 
terror  in  its  turn.  Red  in  the  face  and  with  strain- 
ing haggard  eyes,  the  poor  little  wretch  grieved 
and  cried  the  whole  night,  moving  about  continu- 
ously in  the  arms  of  its  mother,  who  in  vain  tried 
to  quiet  it. 

A  few  hours  later  my  grandmother  learned  that 
her  husband  was  dead,  having  been  shot  not  far 
from  there,  at  dawn,  by  the  republican  soldiers. 
She  never  ceased  to  believe  that  her  son  had  a 
vision  of  the  execution  of  his  father  during  that 
frightful  night. 

As  a  result  of  these  emotions  she  lost  her  milk 
and  the  child  was  turned  over  to  its  grandparents 
and  was  brought  up  on  the  milk  of  a  goat.  As 
to  my  grandmother,  her  appearance  had  been 
carefully  described  and  spread  throughout  the 
countryside  and  the  rural  police  were  on  her  track. 
Then  she  began  the  roving  existence  of  a  fugitive, 
roaming  hither  and  thither  under  various  disguises 
and  only  returning  to  the  house  to  sleep. 

Through  a  very  singular  circumstance  the  only 


3o6  Alphonse  Daudet. 

person  who  knew  the  secret  of  her  concealment 
was  an  ardent  repubHcan  patriot,  the  mistress  of 
one  of  the  men  of  the  Convention  who  was  acting 
as  commissioner  in  the  Vivarais  and  the  Gevaudan. 
This  woman  conceived  the  greatest  sympathy  and 
pity  for  the  proscribed  one;  she  kept  her  informed 
of  all  the  measures  taken  to  seize  her,  and  every 
morning  my  grandmother  would  absent  herself 
from  the  places  where  her  liberty  was  more  than 
commonly  menaced. 

Nevertheless,  one  day  that  she  was  seated  on 
the  edge  of  a  road,  broken  by  fatigue  and  clad  like 
a  poor  goatherd,  she  saw  two  policemen  appear, 
who  asked  her  whether  she  had  not  seen  "  the 
woman  called  Frangoise  Robert "  pass  that  way, 
that  being  her  own  name.  As  you  may  well  be- 
lieve, she  answered  in  the  negative.  The  police- 
men having  asked  her  to  which  village  she  was 
bound,  she  mentioned  one  in  the  neighborhood 
haphazard. 

"That's  just  the  place  we're  going  to!"  an- 
swered one  of  them  twisting  his  moustache  in  the 
most  gallant  fashion.  "  Jump  up  behind  me,  and 
we  will  take  you  there." 

Weeping  copiously,  she  protested  that  she  was 
a  good  girl,  and  the  policemen,  pitying  her  case, 
left  her  after  making  excuses  for  their  conduct. 

Another  time,  having  caught  sight  of  the  rural 
police  at  the  end  of  a  road  on  which  she  was,  she 
rushed  into  a  meadow  where  a  shepherd  was  feed- 
ing his  sheep ;  thrusting  a  piece  of  silver  into  his 
hand,  she  seized  his  hat  and  cloak,  put  the  hat 


My  Brother  and  I.  307 

on  her  head  and  the  cloak  about  her  shoulders, 
saying : 

"  My  dear  man,  do  not  betray  me;  I  am  your 
herd-boy." 

The  shepherd  kept  silence  and  the  policeman 
passed  without  the  slightest  idea  that  the  little 
herd-boy  whose  tattered  felt  hat  covered  his  face 
and  hair  completely,  who  seemed  half  asleep  as 
he  lent  on  his  shepherd  staff,  was  no  other  than 
that  FranQoise  Robert  whom  they  had  been  seek- 
ing in  vain  for  so  many  days. 

Four  years  had  passed  after  these  events  when 
Antoine  Reynaud  met  Frangoise.  He  took  a  great 
fancy  to  her,  married  her,  adopted  her  son  and 
took  her  to  Nimes.  Our  grandmother  was  the 
owner  of  an  uncommon  mind  and  possessed  un- 
usual courage.  These  qualities  became  all  the 
better  in  her  new  husband's  house  and  produced 
excellent  results.  She  raised  herself  socially  along 
with  him  and  on  no  occasion  did  she  find  her- 
self below  that  station  in  society  which  he  had 
been  able  to  win  little  by  little.  She  proved  a  lov- 
ing and  faithful  comrade  in  life  as  well  as  a  dis- 
creet and  safe  helpmeet.  She  contributed  her  full 
share  to  the  establishment  of  that  fortune  which 
unhappily  was  not  destined  to  survive  her  long, 
but  which  she  had  the  merit  of  having  to  a  large 
extent  built  up. 

A  big  volume  might  be  filled  with  interesting 
traits  of  our  grandmother  —  the  courage  she 
showed  one  evening  when  her  husband  was  the 
victim  of  an  attempt  at  assassination ;   her  exhibi- 


3o8  Alp  house  Daudet. 

tions  of  hatred  against  Napoleon ;  her  joy  at  the 
return  of  the  Bourbons  and  all  the  episodes  of  an 
honest  and  energetic  life  of  a  citizen.  At  the 
same  time  she  had  the  very  deuce  of  a  "  go,"  a  de- 
cisiveness of  mind  that  is  rarely  found  in  women, 
a  singular  knack  of  overcoming  difficulties,  the 
boldness  of  a  man,  a  vigorous  temperament  and  a 
health  which  flourished  notwithstanding  the  wear- 
ing fatigues  of  successive  childbirths. 

It  was  under  the  Restoration  that  the  fortune  of 
our  grandparents  reached  high-water  mark.  At 
that  time  they  had  six  children,  including  the  one 
by  the  former  husband,  who  was  treated  like  the 
others  :  three  sons  and  three  daughters.  All  these 
little  creatures  grew  up  in  easy  circumstances. 
Trade  carefully  managed  caused  the  waters  of  Pac- 
tolus  to  flow  through  the  house.  Mme.  Reynaud 
held  a  fine  place  in  society,  where  her  views  of 
things  were  the  law ;  she  had  her  box  at  the  theatre 
and  a  good  property  several  leagues  from  the  city. 

She  was  present  at  every  social  gathering  and 
more  especially  those  which  followed  the  return  of 
the  Bourbons.  Toward  1829,  when  the  Daudets 
held  close  business  relations  with  the  Reynauds, 
this  prosperity  had  only  increased  and  it  seemed 
as  if  it  were  not  possible  that  its  spring  should  be 
weakened. 

Such  was  the  family  into  which  young  Vincent 
Daudet  dreamed  of  entering.  The  oldest  of  the 
Reynaud  girls  was  called  Adeline.  She  was  a  thin 
and  frail-looking  body  with  an  olive-brown  com- 
plexion and  big  mournful  eyes ;   her  physical  de- 


My  Brother  and  I.  309 

velopment  had  been  delayed  by  some  childish 
malady.  She  was  a  dreamy,  romantic  nature,  pas- 
sionately fond  of  reading  and  loving  better  to  live 
with  the  heroes  of  her  imagination  and  their  de- 
lightful stories  than  with  the  realities  of  actual  life, 
yet  all  the  same  she  had  the  soul  of  a  saint  and  an 
infinite  kindliness  and  urbanity.  She  it  was  whom 
Vincent  Daudet  had  dared  to  reach  with  his  love, 
without  fearing  the  distance  that  separated  them. 

At  first  his  project  seemed  rather  ambitious  to 
his  parents  themselves.  The  Reynauds  were  at 
the  head  of  the  business  in  Nimes ;  the  eldest  son 
had  just  made  a  matrimonial  alliance  with  the 
Sabrans  of  Lyon,  and  the  second  managed  an  im- 
portant commission  house  in  that  city.  It  meant 
a  great  deal  of  audacity  merely  to  be  what  Vincent 
Daudet  then  was  and  to  endeavor  to  make  an 
alliance  with  them.  Nevertheless  he  stated  his 
demand  and  friends  intervened  to  plead  his  cause 
and  overcome  the  resistance,  which  was  particularly 
aroused  by  the  two  brothers  of  Mdlle.  Adeline  set- 
tled in  Lyon,  for  they  hoped  for  a  far  more  bril- 
liant marriage  for  their  sister.  Luckily,  when 
Mdlle.  Adeline  was  consulted,  she  cut  the  matter 
short  by  declaring  that  she  was  well  pleased. 

The  marriage  took  place  near  the  beginning  of 
1830  at  the  very  moment  that  Vincent  Daudet, 
who  had  become  a  person  of  importance  through 
his  entrance  into  the  Reynaud  family,  entered  into 
partnership  with  his  brother  to  continue  the  busi- 
ness of  their  father. 

The  earlier  years  of  the  new  marriage  were  sad- 


3IO  Alphonse  Daudet. 

dened  by  a  long  list  of  domestic  troubles.  My 
parents  lost  their  first  children  one  after  the  other, 
with  the  exception  of  the  first-born,  a  boy  whose 
feeble  health  caused  them  a  thousand  disquiets. 
Grandmother  Reynaud  died  very  suddenly,  carried 
off  by  an  affection  of  the  lungs.  One  of  her  sons 
in  Lyon  squandered  a  large  part  of  the  common 
capital  intrusted  to  his  care  in  imprudent  specula- 
tions. And  finally  my  father  was  not  able  to  get 
on  long  with  his  brother.  Their  partnership  was 
dissolved  and  replaced  by  a  rivalry  in  business 
during  the  course  of  which  my  uncle,  who  was 
luckier  or  cleverer,  built  up  a  fortune  which  his 
children  have  inherited  in  peace,  whilst  my  father 
compromised  his  own  in  inventions  which  rarely 
came  to  any  sound  results. 

Alphonse  Daudet  came  into  the  world  just  ten 
years  after  this  marriage,  the  story  and  beginnings 
of  which  I  have  thought  it  necessary  to  relate  at 
the  same  time  with  the  story  of  our  family. 


My  Brother  and  /.  311 


CHAPTER  IV. 

"I  WAS  born  the  13th  of  May  18  —  in  a  Langue- 
doc  town,  where,  as  in  all  the  towns  in  the 
South  of  France,  a  great  deal  of  sun  and  no  little 
dust  may  be  found  along  with  two  or  three  Roman 
monuments."  These  are  the  words  in  which 
Alphonse  Daudet  tells  of  his  birth  on  the  first 
page  of  Le  Petit  Chose,  that  one  of  his  novels  into 
which  he  has  placed  the  most  of  himself,  at  least  in 
the  early  part  of  it. 

The  town  which  he  describes  in  this  way  is 
Nimes.  He  was  born  there  on  the  13th  of  May 
1840,  three  years  after  me,  in  the  second  story  of 
the  Sabran  mansion  which  our  parents  inhabited 
from  the  time  of  their  marriage.  At  the  moment 
he  was  the  third  of  the  living  children. 

The  oldest  was  called  Henri  —  a  fine  artistic 
soul,  high-strung  and  mystical,  and  a  musician  to 
his  very  marrow,  who  died  at  twenty-four  years  as 
a  professor  in  the  College  of  the  Assumption  at 
Nimes,  just  on  the  point  of  entering  into  orders. 
Memory  of  this  sad  recollection  has  inspired  one 
of  the  most  eloquent  pages  in  Le  Petit  Chose, 
that  moving  chapter  entitled  '*  He  is  dead  !  Pray 
for  his  soul !  " 


312  Alphonse  Daudet. 

The  younger  brother  was  the  one  who  tells  this 
story. 

In  1848  the  family  was  increased  by  the  arrival 
of  a  girl  who  is  married  at  present  to  M.  Leon 
Allard,  brother  of  Mme.  Alphonse  Daudet;  he  has 
contributed  to  various  papers  romances  written  in 
a  refined  style  that  reveals  a  rare  talent  for  writing. 

That  Sabran  mansion  where  we  came  into  the 
world  still  stands  on  the  Petit-Cours  almost  oppo- 
site the  Church  of  St.  Charles,  behind  which  the 
Enclos  de  Rey  extends,  that  terrible  Royalist 
suburb,  whose  inhabitants,  taffetassiers  (silk-weav- 
ers) or  laborers  in  the  fields,  have  for  a  century 
furnished  a  noisy  and  rude  contingent  to  all  the 
revolutions  and  riots  in  the  old  Roman  city. 

At  one  of  the  ends  of  the  Petit-Cours  is  the 
square  of  the  Carmes,  at  the  other  the  Ballore 
square. 

All  the  political  life  of  Nimes  was  condensed  in 
the  past  between  those  two  points ;  they  are  con- 
venient for  popular  assemblages  and  are  connected 
together  by  a  wide  avenue  planted  with  a  double 
row  of  plane-trees,  trees  which  each  summer 
powders  with  a  fine  white  dust  down  to  the 
smallest  leaf,  filling  with  cicadas  their  crackling 
branches  on  which  the  bark  is  all  burned  by  the 
sun. 

The  bloodiest  episodes  of  the  Revolution  and 
the  tragical  scenes  of  the  "  bagarre  "  were  played 
out  upon  the  stage  of  the  Petit-Cours. 

There  in  181 5  it  was  that  Gen.  Gilly,  flying  to 
Nimes   the   day  after   the   battle  of  Waterloo   in 


My  Brother  and  I.  313 

order  to  throw  himself  into  the  hills  of  the 
Cevennes,  marched  in  procession  at  the  head  of  his 
chasseurs,  rage  in  his  heart,  anger  in  his  eyes,  his 
bridle  between  his  teeth,  a  pistol  in  one  hand  and 
a  sword  in  the  other,  and  abandoned  the  Bona- 
partists  to  the  horrors  of  a  criminal  reaction,  which 
was  all  too  easy  to  understand  in  view  of  the 
treatment  which  the  Catholics  had  undergone 
during  the  Hundred  Days. 

There  again  in  1831  it  was  that  the  Catholics 
met  together  in  threatening  groups  when  the 
authorities  "dropped  the  crosses" — a  recollec- 
tion to  be  kept  in  mind,  since  it  recalls  to  the  wit- 
nesses of  scenes  in  those  distant  times  the  exag- 
geration natural  to  Southern  temperaments  and 
their  violence,  the  spectacle,  namely,  of  men  savage 
in  their  appearance  ranged  in  the  lines  of  a  proces- 
sion, men  who  sang  the  Psalms  of  Penitence  and 
at  the  same  time  uttered  frightful  oaths  against  the 
"  usurper  "  ;  of  women  with  dishevelled  hair,  their 
arms  folded  over  their  heads,  uttering  cries  of  dis- 
tress; of  priests  running  about  through  these 
groups  with  the  manner  of  martyrs  and  preaching 
resignation  with  their  lips  yet  with  revolution  in 
their  eyes,  all  the  while  that  under  the  protection 
of  armed  forces  the  authorities  were  most  respect- 
fully causing  to  be  deposited  within  the  churches 
the  crosses  that  had  formerly  stood  upon  the  pub- 
lic squares  !  These  crosses  had  been  raised  during 
the  missions  which  took  place  under  the  Villele 
ministry,  when  the  Congregation  was  all-powerful. 

Episodes  of  local  history  in  Nimes  have  found 


314  Alphonse  Daudet. 

other  stages,  for  instance  on  the  Esplanade,  on  the 
Cours-Neuf,  in  the  Arena  and  at  the  Carmes ;  but 
nowhere  did  they  take  on  a  more  dangerous 
appearance  than  along  that  same  Petit-Cours, 
where  the  Enclos  de  Rey  debouches  by  five  or  six 
streets  and  where  for  two  years  after  my  birth, 
during  the  long  July  days,  Catholics  and  Protes- 
tants gave  themselves  up  to  one  battle  more  with 
stones  as  weapons. 

How  many  a  time  during  our  infancy,  while 
breathing  in  the  cool  evening  air  before  our  house, 
have  we  not  been  suddenly  hurried  indoors  by  our 
nursemaid,  whilst  all  about  us  men  and  women 
were  flying  hither  and  thither,  and  from  afar, 
uttered  by  mouths  rude  in  voice,  rose  the  cry  of: 
"  Zou !  zou ! "  the  ordinary  signal  for  rows  in 
Nimes  !  It  meant  that  the  battle  had  begun.  It  all 
ended,  however,  merely  in  bruises  and  scratches 
and  broken  panes.  The  police  let  things  go  and 
the  battle  ended  through  lack  of  fighters. 

It  is  scarcely  unknown  that  my  brother,  along 
with  a  good  deal  of  truth,  put  a  good  deal  of  fancy 
into  Le  Petit  Chose.  It  was  fancy  when  he  wrote : 
"  I  was  the  evil  star  of  my  parents.  From  the  day 
of  my  birth  incredible  disasters  fell  upon  them  from 
twenty  directions." 

On  the  contrary,  it  would  be  more  exact  to  say 
that  at  that  very  moment  there  was  a  respite  in  the 
worries  of  our  family;  the  business  outlook  ap- 
peared more  prosperous ;  fresh  catastrophes  did 
not  occur  until  later,  in  1846  and  1847  and  1848, 
the  epoch  when  the  general  ruin  was  finished.     At 


My  Brother  and  I.  315 

first  we  knew  nothing  but  domestic  well-being; 
we  grew  up  side  by  side  in  an  atmosphere  of  ten- 
derness and  an  intimate  relationship,  hour  by  hour, 
which  created  between  us  that  indestructible  friend- 
ship which  has  always  been  just  as  lively  as  ever 
and  has  never  been  a  single  day  denied. 

At  that  epoch  the  old  Sabran  mansion  was 
filled  with  our  games.  The  shops  of  Vincent 
Daudet  were  on  the  first  story  and  on  the  same 
floor  those  of  one  of  the  cousins,  a  maker  of  shawls. 
Children  were  severely  exiled  from  the  Vincent 
Daudet  part.  If  they  showed  their  rosy  faces  and 
bright  locks  at  the  door,  one  look  from  the  father 
caused  them  to  fly  at  the  swiftest  pace ;  but  on  the 
cousin's  side  they  were  more  friendly. 

There  was  an  old  clerk  there  who  adored  little 
children.  He  made  beautiful  paper  hats  for  us  all 
decked  with  plumes ;  he  fabricated  epaulets  from 
the  remains  of  fringes  of  shawls,  he  armed  us  with 
wooden  swords,  and  just  above  our  lips  he  drew 
terrible  moustaches  with  burnt  cork.  In  such  guise 
as  this  did  we  ascend  to  show  ourselves  to  our 
mother,  whom  we  oftenest  found  plunged  in  some 
book. 

A  passionate  love  for  books  which  she  com- 
municated to  us  has  been  one  of  the  consolations 
of  her  life.  As  a  child  she  used  to  seek  a  refuge  at 
the  back  of  her  father's  shop,  where  she  would 
hide  herself  between  the  bales  of  silk  in  order  to 
read  without  being  interrupted.  Later  it  was  to 
reading  once  more  that  she  consecrated  all  her 
leisure  hours.     It  is  undeniable  that  we  get  from 


3i6  Alphonse  DaudeL 

her   that  vocation   which  has  caused  us  later  to 
plunge  into  literary  life. 

When  I  examine  my  memory  in  an  attempt  to 
recollect  what  my  brother  looked  like  as  a  child, 
I  see  a  handsome  little  boy  three  or  four  years 
old  with  large  brown  eyes,  chestnut  locks,  a  pale 
complexion  and  features  of  exquisite  delicacy.  At 
the  same  time  I  recall  most  terrible  angers  and 
half  tragic  revolts  against  the  punishments  which 
they  brought  upon  him. 

One  day,  in  consequence  of  I  know  not  what 
naughtiness,  he  was  locked  up  alone  in  a  bedroom. 
He  beat  about  in  it  with  such  extraordinary  vio- 
lence that  it  was  necessary  to  open  the  door  of 
the  improvised  prison.  He  came  out  all  bruised  by 
the  hurts  that  he  had  voluntarily  given  himself  by 
throwing  himself  head-foremost  against  the  walls. 

He  inherited  from  our  grandmothers  and  espe- 
cially from  our  father  that  tendency  to  anger 
which  he  has  overcome  by  a  tremendous  effort  of 
will  since  he  has  grown  up ;  but  as  a  child  that 
was  the  dominant  trait  of  his  character  and  it  was 
hard  enough  to  bring  him  up.  He  was  the  most 
extraordinary  mixture  of  docility  and  lack  of  disci- 
pline, kindliness  and  wrong-headedness ;  and  along 
with  that  went  an  inextinguishable  thirst  for  adven- 
tures and  the  unknown,  a  thirst  which  his  short- 
sightedness, increasing  with  age,  aggravated  to  the 
point  of  danger. 

This  short-sightedness  has  played  my  brother 
the  vilest  tricks ;  turn  and  turn  about,  he  has 
drowned,  burned,   poisoned  and  got   himself  run 


My  Brother  and  I.  317 

over;  even  at  the  present  day  (1881)  it  obliges 
him  to  ask  the  help  of  a  friendly  arm  in  order  to 
cross  the  boulevard  at  the  hour  when  it  is  crowded 
with  carriages,  and  it  has  often  caused  people, 
whom  he  has  passed  close  by  without  seeing  them, 
to  believe  that  he  pretended  not  to  greet  them 
through  indifference  or  disdain. 

But  at  the  same  time  it  has  rendered  him  an 
important  service :  it  has  forced  upon  him  the 
necessity  of  living  within  himself;  it  has  gifted  him 
with  the  strangest  and  most  precious  faculty  which 
I  have  met  with  only  in  him,  a  sort  of  inward  look, 
or,  if  you  prefer,  an  intuition  of  extraordinary  power, 
in  consequence  of  which  it  has  happened  that  when 
he  cannot  see  with  his  eyes  the  face  of  any  one  talk- 
ing to  him,  he  divines  the  features  of  his  inter- 
locutor and  at  the  same  time  divines  his  thought. 
Such  an  intensity  of  vision  in  a  short-sighted  man 
is  a  matter  which  I  cannot  explain  to  myself.  He 
is  like  a  blind  man  groping  about  through  life,  and 
yet  in  every  one  of  his  books  he  gives  a  proof  of 
the  most  minute  and  attentive  observation,  almost 
as  if  with  the  aid  of  an  enlarging  glass. 

These  qualities  seen  in  the  grown  person  were 
still  slumbering  in  the  child,  who  was  dominated 
by  a  liveliness  and  turbulence  and  boldness  which 
made  our  mother  tremble  whenever  she  did  not 
feel  him  fast  to  her  skirts,  or  directly  within  the 
sight  of  our  maid.  But  at  the  same  time  his 
nature  was  the  most  direct,  his  heart  the  most 
generous  and  his  mind  the  most  active  of  any. 
Oh  !  what  a  delightful  little  comrade  I  had  there  ! 


3 1 8 ,  A  Iphonse  Daudet. 


CHAPTER  V, 

Among  the  very  keenest  of  our  delights  in  this 
world  must  be  reckoned  our  family  excursions 
on  Sunday.  Generally  they  were  toward  some  vil- 
lage in  the  neighborhood,  such  as  Marguerites  or 
Manduel,  Fons  or  Monfrin.  At  the  last  mentioned 
lived  our  foster-parents,  honest  people  living  very 
comfortably,  who  were  tenderly  in  love  with  the 
child  that  had  been  nursed  under  their  roof  and 
always  delighted  to  see  him  again  in  company 
with  his  own  parents.  After  the  death  of  my 
grandmother  the  property  Font  du  Roi  had  been 
sold.  So  it  was  necessary  to  go  in  search  of  the 
fine  air  of  the  country  somewhere  else,  and  that 
is  why  we  were  taken  to  the  farms  of  our  foster- 
parents,  first  to  one  and  then  to  the  other. 

Early  in  the  morning  we  set  out  in  the  big 
coach  into  which  we  piled,  big  and  little,  with  a 
half  dozen  handsome  uncles  and  male  and  female 
cousins  of  our  age,  and  after  a  fine  journey  in  the 
sunshine  over  turnpikes  white  with  dust,  between 
vineyards  and  olive  orchards,  our  stop  at  last  made 
pleasant  by  rich  meals  and  long  walks  through  the 
fields,  we  returned  at  nightfall  by  the  light  of  the 
moon,  we  children    half  asleep,   but  listening   to 


My  Brother  and  /.  319 

the  ballads  and  romances  which  our  elders  sang 
in  chorus. 

Another  goal  for  long  walks  was  La  Vigne, 
a  little  property  which  lay  near  the  gates  of  the 
city  among  the  small  mazets  (cabins)  scattered 
about  among  the  garrides  (stony,  sterile  fields) 
all  baked  by  the  sun,  where  no  other  protection 
from  the  heat  could  be  found  save  an  arbor  cov- 
ered with  vines ;  there  we  often  took  our  supper 
during  the  summer  evenings  after  having  passed 
many  an  hour  devouring  grapes  —  ceillades  and 
clairettes  —  which  our  little  hands  plucked  from 
the  upright  stocks  crowded  with  leaves  and  clus- 
ters, vines  raised  with  difficulty  above  a  soil  har- 
dened by  the  long  droughts  of  the  summer. 

That  modest  property  was  not  more  than  a  few 
acres,  yet  it  possessed  a  monumental  gateway  in 
iron  which  helped  to  make  it  seem  as  big  to  us 
as  the  whole  country.  Down  the  centre  ran  a 
path  edged  with  box  and  dwarf  rose  bushes;  to 
the  right  and  left  were  the  vines,  and  they  shared 
the  territory  with  almond  and  olive  trees ;  at  the 
bottom  of  the  plot  was  a  clover-field  where  our 
father  used  to  hunt  larks  with  a  mirror;  a  tumble- 
down wall  ran  about  it  composed  of  stones  placed 
one  upon  the  other  without  cement  like  all  the 
walls  in  that  part  of  the  world.  What  delightful 
days  have  we  not  passed  in  La  Vigne ! 

On  returning  from  the  vineyard  we  would  stop 
at  the  factory  where  the  scarfs  were  colored  which 
the  Uaudet  house  at  that  time  despatched  through- 
out France,  into  Italy  and  Spain,  and  even  as  far 


320  .  Alphonse  Daudet. 

as  Algiers.  Beyond  the  workshop  there  was  a 
decidedly  nice  garden ;  there  we  were  apt  to  call 
a  halt  before  entering  the  town  itself  and  take  the 
occasion  to  pluck  a  few  hatfuls  of  fruit. 

Whilst  considering  these  distant  recollections  I 
cannot  pass  over  in  silence  the  season  for  the  fair 
at  Beaucaire  which  returned  with  great  exactness 
every  year.  At  such  times  the  Daudet  house 
transferred  itself  with  merchandise  and  all  its  older 
members  to  that  little  town,  one  that  for  many 
centuries  was  among  the  most  important  markets 
of  Europe.  You  will  find  a  very  picturesque 
description  of  this  fair  at  Beaucaire  in  Numa 
Roiiviestan. 

"  It  was  the  holiday  of  the  year  in  our  Southern 
provinces,  the  one  attraction  for  all  those  shrivelled 
lives ;  a  long  while  before  it  occurred  people  got 
ready  for  it  and  a  long  while  afterwards  people 
talked  of  it.  It  was  a  reward  which  a  man  would 
promise  to  his  wife  or  children,  and  if  he  could 
not  take  them  with  him  he  would  always  bring 
back  from  it  some  piece  of  Spanish  lace  or  a  play- 
thing which  they  would  find  at  the  bottom  of  his 
packet.  The  fair  of  Beaucaire,  making  business  its 
pretext,  meant  also  a  fortnight  or  a  full  month  given 
up  to  the  free,  exuberant  and  unexpected  exist- 
ence of  a  Bohemian  encampment.  People  slept 
here  and  there  in  the  homes  of  the  inhabitants,  or 
on  the  counters  in  the  shops,  or  even  in  the  street 
under  the  canvas  of  the  carts,  beneath  the  warm 
light  of  the  July  stars.  How  delightful  was  busi- 
ness transacted  without  the  boredom  of  the  shop 


My  Brother  and  I.  321 

and  matters  of  finance  effected  whilst  dining  at  the 
door  in  shirt-sleeves !  Then,  all  the  booths  set  up 
in  a  line  along  the  meadow  on  the  banks  of  the 
Rhone,  the  river  itself  being  nothing  but  a  moving 
fair-ground  where  boats  of  every  shape  bobbed 
up  and  down  —  lafmts  with  lateen  sails  coming 
from  Aries,  Marseille,  Barcelona  and  the  Balearic 
Islands  laden  with  wines,  anchovies,  cork  and 
oranges,  all  adorned  with  gorgeous  banners  and 
streamers  slapping  and  snapping  in  the  lively 
wind  and  all  reflected  in  the  swiftly-flowing  water ! 
And  then  such  an  uproar  from  that  many-colored 
crowd  of  Spaniards,  Sardinians,  Greeks  in  long 
tunics  and  embroidered  slippers,  Armenians  in 
furred  caps  and  Turks  in  their  befrogged  waist- 
coats, with  their  broad  fans  and  wide  breeches  of 
gray  linen,  all  of  them  crowding  into  the  open-air 
restaurants ;  and  then  the  lines  of  tables  covered 
with  toys  for  children,  canes,  umbrellas,  silverware, 
pastils  of  the  harem,  hats  and  caps,  etc." 

Although  Nimes  was  hardly  six  leagues  distant 
from  Beaucaire  we  little  ones  were  not  taken  to 
the  fair ;  we  were  left  at  home.  But  the  house 
was  turned  over  to  us ;  we  ruled  there  like  little 
sovereigns,  and  God  knows  with  what  a  noise  we 
filled  it !  Then,  when  they  came  back,  our  father 
brought  us  a  souvenir  which  constituted  the  crown 
and  culmination  of  the  period  of  loose  discipline, 
of  spoiling  and  a  free  and  easy  life  —  a  whip  or  a 
box  of  geographical  blocks,  a  sword  or  a  trumpet, 
things  of  little  value  which  delighted  us  beyond 
measure. 


322  Alphonse  Daudet. 

Rarely  did  children  ever  have  more  playthings 
than  we.  During  his  sickly  infancy  our  elder 
brother  Henri  had  been  overwhelmed  with  them, 
and  when  his  studies  began  he  turned  them  all 
over  to  us,  and  then  the  mass  grew  still  larger  by 
the  addition  of  those  which  were  given  to  us. 

Grandfather  Daudet,  however,  was  not  much  of 
a  bestower  of  gifts.  Economical  to  the  rigor 
point  throughout  his  life,  his  largess  to  his  grand- 
children never  went  further  than  a  box  of  pepper- 
mints, which  he  thrust  into  each  one's  pocket  on 
New  Year's  Day  after  they  had  presented  him 
with  the  compliments  of  the  season. 

Grandfather  Reynaud  was  entirely  different. 
His  only  pleasure  consisted  in  making  us  happy 
and  enjoying  our  surprise  and  delight.  Christmas- 
eve  or  New  Year's  Day,  or  the  Day  of  the  Magi, 
were  just  so  many  pretexts  for  luxuries  and  gifts. 

Oh  what  memories  of  New  Year's  Day  in  our 
childhood  !  —  meetings  at  grandfather's  house  at 
noon  for  dinner,  the  recitation  acquired  with  such 
difficulty  and  mumbled  over  with  impatient  lips, 
whilst  little  eyes  rolled  round  to  stare  at  the  side- 
board crammed  with  eatables  and  playthings  — 
jumping-jacks,  accordions,  wooden  horses  and 
sheep,  dolls  and  I  know  not  what  more !  Then 
the  distribution  of  the  presents  accompanied  by  the 
wild  excitement  of  desires  set  in  liveliest  motion; 
the  dinner  composed  of  the  most  delicate  tidbits, 
pastries  made  by  old  Sophie,  brandade  of  codfish 
from  Cadet's  kitchen,  "  estevenos "  (cakes)  from 
Villaret  the  pastrycook,  nougats  from  Barthelemy 


My  Brother  and  I.  323 

the  confectioner,  sweetmeats  in  shapes  of  people 
and  sugarplums  in  paper  crackers  !  Then  our  dances 
down  the  big  blue  drawing-room,  which  was  never 
opened  except  on  that  day,  whilst  our  elders  con- 
tinued their  discussions  among  themselves. 

So  it  was  that,  thanks  to  our  elder  brother  and 
Grandfather  Reynaud,  Alphonse  and  I  possessed 
enough  playthings  to  sell.  Before  he  made  away 
with  them  all,  owing  to  his  terrible  craze  for  know- 
ing what  they  looked  like  inside,  we  had  filled  an 
entire  room  with  them  at  the  Vallongue  Street 
house  into  which  we  moved  in   1844. 

About  that  time  we  were  already  fitting  up 
theatres  with  the  actors  all  of  wood  or  cardboard 
and  were  already  inventing  plays.  I  was  very 
skilful  in  dressing  our  actors.  One  day  when  I 
had  just  finished  dressing  a  little  articulated  doll  as 
a  page,  Alphonse  arranged  a  fine  scene  in  order 
to  make  use  of  this  masterpiece  from  my  hands ; 
I  regret  very  much  that  I  did  not  keep  it,  for  it 
was  his  beginning  as  a  dramatist. 

Among  other  playthings  which  we  possessed 
there  was  an  entire  furniture  for  a  chapel  suited  to 
children  of  our  size ;  nothing  was  lacking,  neither 
altar,  candlesticks,  tabernacle,  chalice,  pyx,  nor 
host.  Our  mother  had  cut  the  cloth  for  the  altar 
from  an  old  embroidered  gown  and  sewed  the  alb 
and  surplice,  while  one  of  our  uncles  at  Lyon  had 
sent  us  chasuble,  cross  and  mitre. 

The  materials  for  this  little  church  had  remained 
a  long  while  unused  and  in  reserve,  but  one  fine 
day  they  were   presented   to   us  outright.     Then 


324  Alphonse  Daudet. 

only  began  our  religious  ceremonies,  salutations, 
benedictions  and  processions  through  the  great 
garrets  where  our  father  had  placed  the  working 
benches  for  the  women  who  carded  the  silk. 

These  ourdisseuses  or  carders  of  silk,  five  or  six 
in  number,  were  good  girls  and  for  the  most  part 
very  devout  ones,  who  took  great  pleasure  in 
hearing  us  sing  the  canticles.  Very  often  our 
girl  cousins,  Emma  and  Maria,  with  their  brother 
Leonce,  a  fine  boy  who  was  killed  at  Pont-Noyelles 
in  the  war  of  1870,  and  a  few  of  our  friends  came 
in  for  the  purpose  of  taking  part  in  our  games. 
It  was  at  that  time  the  episode  occurred  which  we 
still  call  in  the  family  the  story  of  the  Virgin 
Mary. 

On  that  day  we  had  draped  with  the  white  alb 
our  cousin  Emma,  a  pretty  brunette  of  our  own 
age  and  had  crowned  her  with  roses  and  placed 
her  seated  in  a  big  basket  for  silk  bobbins  lent 
us  by  the  carding  girls,  and  so  we  carried  her 
solemnly  in  procession  just  as  the  Virgin  Mary  is 
borne  along  above  a  reliquary;  and  so  we  went 
through  the  house,  chanting  religious  songs  such 
as  our  memory  was  full  of.  We  had  divided  all 
the  other  ornaments  up  among  ourselves,  one 
carrying  the  chasuble,  the  other  the  mitre  and 
the  third  the  cross.  Dressed  in  the  proper  gown, 
Alphonse  played  choir  boy  and  marched  at  the 
head  of  the  procession  with  a  bell  in  his  hand. 

Bad  luck  willed  it  that  at  that  very  moment  my 
father  was  receiving  an  important  customer  from 
Lyon. 


My  Brother  and  /.  325 

Bothered  by  our  noise,  he  sent  us  word  to  be 
quiet,  but  we  neglected  to  take  much  notice  of 
the  warning.  Patience  was  not  exactly  Vincent 
Daudet's  virtue,  and  when  he  did  get  angry  it  was 
no  light  matter.  All  of  a  sudden  he  appeared  on 
the  threshold  of  the  workshop  where  the  proces- 
sion was  just  about  to  end  before  the  brilliantly 
lighted  altar ;  with  the  back  of  his  hand  he  sent 
the  choir  boy  and  the  bell  rolling  over  the  floor, 
and  then,  as  every  one  tried  to  escape,  he  seized 
the  reliquary  just  as  one  would  an  ordinary  coal- 
scuttle, and  grabbing  the  Virgin  Mary  on  the  fly, 
he  tore  the  white  alb  from  top  to  bottom  and 
made  her  crown  skip  through  the  air.  That  eve- 
ning he  notified  my  mother,  in  whose  absence  this 
tragi-comic  scene  had  passed,  that  he  had  had 
enough  of  those  ceremonies  and  canticles  in  his 
house ! 

We  children  therefore  returned  to  the  little 
room  where  the  playthings  were  and  passed  our 
recreation  hours  there.  Later  on  Ave  were  ad- 
mitted to  a  larger  room  at  the  end  of  the  apart- 
ment and  there  under  Henri's  direction  a  theatre 
was  arranged  in  which  he  rehearsed  one  of  Ber- 
quin's  plays  with  several  comrades.  Although 
they  were  simply  scraps  of  boys  their  services 
were  accepted.  We  had  our  part  in  a  representa- 
tion before  the  family,  which  was  given  on  a 
Thursday  and  in  good  truth  only  obtained  a 
"  success  of  esteem." 

About  that  time  our  dear  father  brought  us  one 
day  on  his   return  from  the  Fair  at  Beaucaire  a 


326  Alp  house  Daudet. 

Robinson  Crusoe  in  two  illustrated  volumes,  a  Swiss 
Family  Robinson  and  the  Journal  des  Enfants 
bound  in  six  big  volumes,  full  of  stories  signed 
Jules  Janin,  Fr^ddric  Souli6,  Louis  Desnoyers, 
Ernest  Fouinet,  fidouard  Ourliac  and  Eugenie 
Foa.  Then  it  was  that  for  the  first  time  we  read 
the  Aventures  de  Jean- Paul  Chopart  as  well  as  the 
Avcntures  de  Robert  Robert  et  de  son  Compagnon 
Toussaint  Lavenette,  and  the  TkMtre  du  Seigneur 
Croquignole,  the  Mysthes  du  Chdteau  de  Pierrefitte 
and  L^on  et  L^onie  and  a  hundred  other  stories 
written  for  children  of  our  age,  veritable  little 
masterpieces  for  the  most  part,  which  have  left 
an  ineffaceable  trace  upon  our  memory  and  exer- 
cised so  lively  an  impression  upon  our  childhood 
that  even  to-day,  when  one  of  these  volumes,  all 
worn  and  torn,  happens  to  come  across  our  path, 
a  crowd  of  memories  of  the  distant  past  rises  from 
its  dog-eared  pages. 


My  Brother  and  I.  ^2^ 


CHAPTER  VI. 

In  the  month  of  September,  1846,  our  parents 
resolved  to  have  me  begin  my  Latin  studies.  Up 
to  that  time  our  education  had  been  left  to  the 
Brothers  of  the  Christian  Doctrine  to  whom  those 
families  of  Catholic  faith  who  were  best  to  do,  did 
not  scorn  to  send  their  children  —  as  an  example. 
They  taught  me  to  read  and  write  and  gave  me 
some  few  ideas  of  sacred  history  and  religious 
instruction.  Alphonse  was  left  with  them  for 
still  another  year.  Our  elder  brother  finished  his 
classes  with  an  old  professor  named  Verdilhan 
who  long  before  had  started  on  his  career  as  in- 
structor under  the  auspices  of  our  uncle  the 
Abbe. 

As  for  me  it  was  decided  to  send  me  as  a  day 
scholar  to  the  College  of  the  Assumption,  which 
a  vicar-general  of  the  diocese  was  directing,  namely 
Abbe  dAlzon,  who  caused  himself  to  be  talked  of 
a  great  deal  later  on. 

There  it  was  that  I  took  my  first  communion  in 
1848,  the  day  before  that  on  which  the  Archbishop 
of  Paris  was  killed  on  the  barricades ;  there  I  lived 
two  years  under  the  charge  of  masters  whose  high- 
strung  opinions  I  have  sometimes  been  compelled 


328  Alphonse  Daudet. 

to  disavow  later,  but  who  were  almost  all  of 
them  eminent,  affectionate  and  paternal  men,  ex- 
tremely able  in  molding  the  mind  and  soul  of 
the  children  confided  to  their  charge. 

What  decided  my  father  to  send  me  to  the  As- 
sumption was  the  relative  lowness  of  the  charges 
for  day  scholars.  But  in  1848  his  fortune,  which 
had  been  receiving  severe  blows  for  two  years 
past,  was  completely  undermined. 

Successive  failures  of  several  of  his  clients  carried 
off  one  part  of  it,  and  then  came  the  commercial 
crisis  and  stagnation  of  business  which  followed 
the  Revolution,  and  lastly,  to  put  a  final  touch  to 
all  this  list  of  catastrophes,  came  the  death  of 
Grandfather  Reynaud. 

That  exposed  the  depth  of  the  abyss  into  which 
his  sons  had  allowed  his  fortune  to  disappear. 
Our  parents  had  been  counting  on  that  inheritance 
in  order  to  face  difficulties  which  became  every 
day  more  inextricable.  But  they  got  nothing 
from  it. 

It  gave  the  signal  for  deep  and  wide  divisions 
in  the  family.  The  blackest  sadness  lay  upon  our 
house  and  our  dear  mother  never  ceased  from 
weeping.  Under  the  urgency  of  his  cares  my 
father  had  become  irritable  and  cranky ;  he  wanted 
to  start  a  lawsuit  against  his  brother-in-law  and 
flew  into  a  rage  with  any  one  who  attempted  to 
defend  him  or  talk  about  a  reconciliation. 

The  clearest  point  in  the  whole  trouble  was  this, 
that  it  was  necessary  to  reduce  expenses  and  live 
with  the   strictest  economy.     I   was   taken   away 


My  Brother  and  I.  329 

from  the  Assumption  and  went  in  turn  to  learn 
from  Father  Verdilhan.  Alphonse  had  entered 
some  months  before  the  Canivet  Institute,  a 
modest  estabhshment  where  he  penetrated  Httle 
by  Httle  into  the  secret  recesses  of  the  Latin 
grammar. 

One  justice  must  be  given  to  our  excellent  father, 
that,  notwithstanding  his  disaster,  he  never  dreamed 
of  economizing  to  our  disadvantage  nor  of  inter- 
rupting our  studies  under  the  plea  that  he  could 
only  pay  the  cost  with  great  difficulty. 

One  of  the  family,  who  was  a  very  practical 
man  and  extremely  rich,  to  whom  my  father  was 
in  debt,  mingled  many  counsels  with  incessant  de- 
mands for  repayment.  He  loudly  declared  that 
the  firm  intention  to  give  us  a  solid  education  in 
the  absence  of  a  fortune  was  the  act  of  a  man 
filled  with  absurd  pride.  His  opinion  was  that  we 
ought  to  be  taught  a  good  trade.  If  he  had  been 
listened  to,  probably  I  should  be  a  locksmith  to- 
day, and  Alphonse  would  be  handling  the  plane 
and  saw. 

But  Vincent  Daudet  did  not  hold  to  this  opinion 
at  all ;  he  persisted  in  trusting  to  the  star  of  his 
sons.  It  was  one  of  our  delights  that  we  had 
never  betrayed  that  confidence.  He  therefore 
looked  another  way  for  the  means  to  economize. 
We  left  the  fine  apartment  in  Vallongue  Street  to 
establish  ourselves  in  the  factory,  that  factory  on 
the  Avignon  road,  the  remembrance  of  which,  ever 
vivid  in  Alphonse  Baudot's  mind,  suggested  to  him 
the  first  chapter  of  Le  Petit  Chose. 


330  Alphoiue  Daudet. 

There  were  big  rooms  there  and  plenty  of 
air  and  space;  we  were  very  comfortably  in- 
stalled. There  we  met  together  every  evening 
and  my  brother  came  in  too,  after  his  return  from 
school ;  there  we  passed  our  Thursdays  and  Sun- 
days running  about  the  courts  upon  which  great 
empty  workshops  opened,  making  mysterious  rob- 
ber dens  for  ourselves  in  the  steam-engine  which 
was  reduced  to  immobility  and  rolling  about  on 
the  grass  in  the  garden  under  the  fig-tree  behind 
the  wall  of  lilacs.  Cousins  of  both  sexes  come  to 
share  our  games  and  our  noisy  laughter  made  a 
strange  contrast  with  the  agony  of  our  parents 
caused  by  the  sickly  silence  of  that  vast  factory, 
where  the  sudden  stoppage  of  all  movement  merely 
hastened  the  complete  ruin  of  the  family. 

Still,  there  were  some  bright  clearings  in  the 
darkness  of  our  distress.  In  the  first  place  there 
was  the  marriage  of  our  youngest  aunt  who  had 
come  to  live  with  us  after  the  death  of  Grand- 
father Reynaud,  and  the  birth  of  our  sister,  which 
sent  a  warm  ray  of  sunlight  through  the  whole 
house,  and  finally  the  arrival  of  one  of  the  Lyon 
uncles  who  took  up  his  abode  under  our  roof. 

In  consequence  of  I  know  not  what  arrangement 
he  was  to  have  the  direction  of  the  factory  and  the 
color-room  on  the  day  that  business  should  start 
up  again  ;  but  what  I  am  sure  of  is,  that  whilst 
waiting  for  this  rousing  up  from  stagnation,  which, 
by  the  way,  never  occurred,  he  was  practising  his 
future  functions  at  a  furious  rate.  He  had  brought 
with  him  a  great  number  of  volumes,  for  the  most 


My  Brother  and  I.  331 

part  with  illustrations,  and  he  occupied  all  his  time 
in  coloring  these  pictures.  It  was  a  regular  craze ; 
he  colored  everything  that  he  could  get  hold  of 
and  even  illuminated  a  Spanish  grammar. 

This  dear  man  adored  my  brother  and  lent  him- 
self to  every  one  of  his  fancies ;  he  pushed  his 
weakness  to  the  point  of  being  an  accomplice  of 
his  naughtinesses  by  helping  him  to  conceal  them 
and  even  went  so  far  as  to  accuse  me  of  them. 
One  fine  morning,  tired  of  coloring  pictures,  he 
disappeared  and  we  never  saw  him  again.  I  really 
believe  that  without  knowing  it  he  posed  as  one  of 
the  characters  in  Le  Nabab.  In  that  novel  there  is 
a  certain  cashier  in  the  Caisse  Territoriale  who  has 
a  terrible  likeness  to  him. 


332  Alp  house  Daudet. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Another  memory  of  this  period  is  that  of  the 
clubs.  Our  father  had  always  taken  great  interest 
in  politics,  but  of  course  theoretically  and  with- 
out the  shadow  of  a  personal  ambition,  although 
like  certain  others  he  might  have  been  able  to 
obtain  an  election  as  Deputy.  At  all  times  dur- 
ing our  meals,  when  the  subject  of  business  was 
worn  dry,  the  usual  subject  of  his  talks  with  our 
mother  consisted  of  politics,  or  rather,  to  speak 
more  exactly,  the  subject  of  his  monologues.  He 
viewed  public  matters  from  the  point  of  view  of 
his  Royalist  prejudices  and  would  scarcely  admit 
any  one  to  hold  a  contrary  opinion. 

In  the  little  Cornand  Club,  whither  he  went 
every  day,  he  met  with  excellent  fellows  who  were 
filled  with  the  same  ideas,  and  particularly  an 
old  judge  who  exerted  a  great  influence  on  his 
mind,  an  eloquent  talker  who  explained  events 
with  no  little  ingenuity  and  occupied  himself  in 
forecasting  what  was  to  come. 

He  it  was  who,  taking  advantage  of  the  presence 
of  one  of  the  sons  of  the  King  at  Nimes,  went  to 
his  hotel  and  left  a  card  on  which  he  had  written 
these  verses :  — 


My  Brother  and  I.  '^^iZ 

"  Prince,  ne  croyez  pas  que  le  Fran9ais  oublie 
Les  bienfaits  dont  il  fut  redevable  k  ses  rois ; 
lis  sont,  quoiqu'exilds,  presents  k  la  patrie 
Plus  que  I'usurpateur  qui  lui  dicte  des  lois !  " 

And  the  excellent  fellow  was  proud  of  what  he  con- 
sidered an  act  of  boldness  and  courage.  Observe 
that  he  was  a  judge,  who  could  not  be  removed ; 
such  characteristics  depict  a  whole  race  ! 

Our  father  came  back  from  the  club  to  his 
family  filled  with  all  he  had  been  hearing  and 
repeated  it  to  us  whilst  mixing  in  his  own  per- 
sonal reflections.  His  entire  political  faith  may- 
be summed  up  as  follows :  The  Revolution  of 
1830  was  a  crime  and  France  will  always  be  un- 
happy as  long  as  the  Bourbons  have  not  recon- 
quered their  throne ;  therefore  people  ought  to 
long  for  and  hasten  on  the  Restoration  of  the 
rightful  king. 

Whilst  expounding  these  political  views  he  gen- 
erally added  a  few  harsh  truths  concerning  "  those 
rebels "  to  whom  he  was  pleased  to  attribute  his 
own  financial  ruin.  From  the  earliest  days  we 
can  recall  we  have  heard  much  talk  concerning 
Genoude  and  Lourdoueix  and  Madier-Montjau, 
the  man  who  "  begged  the  pardon  of  God  and 
of  men"  for  his  conduct  in  1830,  and  of  Guizot, 
Thiers  and  Odilon  Barrot  —  God  only  knows  with 
what  bitterness  some  of  them  were  treated  !  Un- 
der such  views  and  ideas  were  we  brought  up  ! 

When  the  Revolution  of  1848  had  forcibly 
arranged  a  great  deal  of  leisure  for  our  father, 
politics  absorbed    him,  and  indeed  that  had  be- 


334  Alp  house  Daudet 

come  the  sole  preoccupation  of  all  the  French. 
Nothing  was  talked  about  in  our  presence  except 
local  rows,  reviews  of  the  National  Guard,  night 
patrols,  cares  aroused  by  the  mutinies  in  Paris  and 
the  uncertainties  of  the  morrow. 

Our  father  constantly  met  the  chiefs  of  the 
Royalist  party.  At  the  approach  of  the  elections 
they  made  a  demand  upon  him  to  open  his  work- 
shops to  assemblages  in  which  their  own  candi- 
dates might  be  able  to  appear  and  be  heard.  He 
met  their  desire  half-way  and  for  several  evenings, 
whilst  playing  in  the  garden,  we  enjoyed  the  spec- 
tacle of  noisy  meetings  whose  cause  and  object, 
however,  we  did  not  in  any  way  understand ;  for 
us  they  simply  consisted  in  tumultuous  discus- 
sions, violent  interruptions  and  especially  in  bro- 
ken windows.  After  the  elections  it  was  necessary 
to  replace  about  a  hundred  panes  of  glass  in  the 
windows.  It  is  true  that  the  list  of  Royalist 
nominees  had  been  elected.  After  that,  silence 
fell  again  and  our  life  took  on  its  usual  features, 
but  it  was  for  a  short  time  only.  A  few  weeks 
after,  the  factory  was  sold  to  a  congregation  of 
Carmelite  monks  who  took  up  their  abode  there 
and  are  living  there  to-day. 

"  It  was  a  frightful  blow,"  my  brother  has 
written  ;  "  heavens,  how  I  wept !  You  may  believe 
that  I  no  longer  had  a  heart  to  play.  Oh  !  no  in- 
deed !  .  .  .  I  went  and  seated  myself  in  one  place 
after  the  other  and  looking  round  at  all  the  objects 
about  me  I  talked  to  them  as  if  they  were  human 
beings ;  I  said  to  the  plane  trees :   '  Farewell,  my 


My  Brother  and  I.  335 

dearest  friends,'  and  to  the  water-pools:  'All  is  at 
an  end,  we  shall  never  see  each  other  again.'  " 

The  imagination  of  the  novelist  evokes  memories 
of  his  youthful  years  when  he  has  come  to  man's 
estate.  And  that  which  is  most  sincere  in  these 
recollections  is  the  expression  therein  contained  of 
the  sadness  which  befell  him  as  a  child.  We  had 
bitter  sorrow  in  leaving  the  places  where  the  better 
part  of  our  childhood  had  flowed  happily  and 
peacefully  along.  We  went  to  live  in  a  little  apart- 
ment in  Seguier  Street  whilst  our  father  left  for 
Lyon,  where  he  hoped  to  retrieve  his  fortunes.  In 
Seguier  Street  we  did  not  delay  long  before  we  re- 
established much  the  same  life  that  we  passed  at 
the  factory.  We  had  there  a  garden  also,  but  a 
real  garden  with  trees  and  flowers  and  an  aban- 
doned hothouse.  Alphonse  found  there  once 
more  his  cabin  and  caves  and  Robinson  Crusoe's 
island,  whilst  a  little  girl,  the  daughter  of  the  land- 
lord, served  him  in  place  of  a  man  Friday.  But 
after  all  he  began  to  take  less  pleasure  in  these 
games.  He  preferred  the  noisy  recreations  at  the 
Canivet  school,  rough  play  with  comrades  and 
tricks  at  the  expense  of  neighbors. 

Among  the  latter  was  an  old  fellow  who  lived 
quite  alone  like  a  savage  in  a  house  with  a  myste- 
rious look,  which  was  always  shut.  My  brother 
and  one  of  his  comrades  thought  it  funny  to  go  at 
night  after  school  hours  and  pull  the  bell  of  the 
hermitage  and  then  suddenly  disappear,  so  that 
when  he  came  to  open  the  door  no  one  was  there. 
This  conduct  lasted  eight  days,  but  on  the  ninth 


336  Alphonse  Daudet. 

the  exasperated  man  lay  in  watch,  and  when,  that 
evening,  the  little  fellows  came  up  as  usual  to  pull 
his  bell,  he  opened  the  door  and  appeared  to  them 
with  a  frightful  visage ;  he  sprang  upon  them,  red 
in  the  face  and  almost  blind  with  fury.  They  fled 
at  the  top  of  their  speed  and  sHpped  into  the  side 
street  by  our  house  which  the  night  had  filled  with 
darkness.  Then,  clambering  swiftly  up  the  stairs, 
they  rushed  for  refuge  among  us,  almost  crazed  by 
fear.  The  old  man  followed  them  into  the  dark 
alley,  but  he  did  not  know  who  they  were  and  in- 
stead of  going  to  the  left,  he  turned  to  the  right 
and  fell  with  loud  cries  of  distress  down  the  steps 
which  led  into  the  cellars.  People  ran  up  and 
raised  him  almost  motionless  from  br^iises  and  car- 
ried him  back  to  his  house. 

This  little  adventure  had  no  consequences  ex- 
cept that,  as  one  may  imagine,  the  bell  was  left 
alone  from  that  day  onward.  I  had  been  the  wit- 
ness of  the  anguish  and  terrors  of  my  brother  and 
thus  I  became  a  confidant  of  his  schoolboy  mon- 
key-tricks and  aided  him  to  conceal  them  from 
our  parents. 

This  episode  is  the  last  I  remember  from  that 
period  of  our  childhood.  In  the  spring  of  1849 
we  left  for  Lyon,  where  our  father  had  discovered 
a  lucrative  place. 

My  mother  could  not  leave  her  family  and  her 
dear  Nimes  without  a  heart-break  and  her  sorrow 
threw  a  veil  of  melancholy  across  the  whole  trip, 
through  which,  however,  I  can  still  see  various  cir- 
cumstances which  were  likely  to  impress  the  minds 


My  Brother  a7id  I.  337 

of  children  of  our  age  —  our  journey  in  the  coach 
as  far  as  Valence,  the  monotonous  trip  up  the 
Rhone  in  the  steamboat,  the  arrival  at  Lyon,  our 
drive  in  a  carriage  along  the  quays  with  their  high 
black  houses  and  our  installation  in  a  fourth  story 
on  Lafont  Street.  Like  Le  Petit  Chose  I  also  am 
able  to  exclaim  :  "  Oh  !  scenes  and  objects  of  my 
childhood,  what  an  impression  have  you  not  left 
upon  my  mind  !  " 


338  Alphonse  Daudet. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

To-day  that  I  am  separated  by  more  than  thirty 
years  full  of  labor  from  the  time  which  I  describe, 
turning  the  eyes  of  my  memory  back  across 
that  long  period,  I  ask  myself  what  epoch  of  my 
life  was  the  most  sorrowful,  and  all  my  past  de- 
clares that  it  was  the  time  of  our  stay  in  Lyon. 
And  indeed  that  is  exactly  the  impression  which 
I  find  in  this  passage  from  a  study  written  by  my 
brother :  "  I  recall  a  low  sky  the  color  of  soot  and 
a  fog  perpetually  rising  from  the  two  rivers.  It 
does  not  rain,  it  oozes  with  damp  fog.  And  in  the 
enervation  of  a  soft  atmosphere  the  walls  of  the 
houses  weep,  the  pavement  sweats  and  the  balus- 
trades of  the  stairways  stick  to  the  fingers.  The 
appearance  of  the  townspeople,  their  gait  and 
language  correspond  with  the  moistness  in  the 
air." 

But  beside  these  purely  physical  causes  for  the 
sadness  which  the  memory  of  Lyon  always 
awakes  in  me  there  are  others  entirely  moral  and 
personal  which  I  should  be  very  sorry  to  conceal 
here.  I  was  approaching  youthful  manhood,  and 
my  mind,  which  had  been  matured  early  by  the 
spectacle  of  the  unhappiness  of  my  parents,  was, 
to  use  the  only  word  which  would  exactly  describe 


My  Brother  and  I.  339 

my  thought,  "  precociously  virilized  "  and  at  the 
same  time  rendered  melancholy.  The  perplex- 
ities of  my  father  and  the  tears  of  my  mother  fall- 
ing upon  my  heart  were  far  from  making  me  well 
disposed  to  the  recreations  natural  to  my  age. 

They  developed  in  me  a  sickly  sensibility,  the 
germ  of  which  I  got  from  my  mother.  I  burst 
into  tears  at  the  slightest  thing,  at  the  least  bit  of 
reproach,  or  for  some  question  which  it  embar- 
rassed me  to  answer.  Nobody  understood  what 
was  the  matter  and  I  understood  nothing  myself, 
for  I  would  have  been  considerably  dashed  if  I 
had  had  to  explain  the  reason  for  my  tears.  In 
Le  Petit  Chose,  when  my  brother  traced  the 
touching  protrait  of  Jacques,  he  remembered  this 
trait  in  my  nature.  Jacques  resembles  me  more 
especially  in  that  point,  much  more  so  than  in  the 
various  adventures,  for  the  most  part  purely  imagi- 
nary, through  which  my  brother  makes  me  move 
whilst  endeavoring  with  the  eloquence  of  a  grate- 
ful heart  to  depict  the  solicitude  of  an  older  for  a 
younger  brother.  Still,  I  will  say  and  not  return 
to  it  again,  there  is  one  among  all  these  adventures 
which  is  rigorously  true,  the  scene  of  the  "  jug." 

We  were  so  poor  and  wretched,  our  enterprises 
were  so  unlucky  that  nobody  thought  of  procur- 
ing pleasures  for  us.  The  only  enjoyments  which 
were  permitted  us,  because  they  were  within  reach 
of  our  almost  empty  purse,  consisted  in  a  few 
excursions  into  the  surrounding  country,  to  Char- 
pennes  and  the  Tete-d'Or  and  into  the  woods  of 
La  Pape. 


340  Alphonse  Daudet. 

These  forests,  which  I  have  never  seen  again  and 
which  I  am  told  a  Hne  of  railway  has  destroyed, 
rose  in  terraces  and  showed  their  splendid  green 
tints  upon  the  banks  of  the  Rhdne ;  they  revealed 
the  beauties  of  meadows,  waters  and  woods  to  us 
little  Southerners  brought  up  under  the  burning 
sun  in  fields  that  never  are  watered,  but  are  ever 
burned  by  the  fierce  sunshine.  Alphonse  and  I 
took  long  walks  together  and  we  imbibed  from 
these  impressions  of  nature  a  love  of  the  country 
which  both  of  us  have  preserved  in  equal  strength. 

On  Sundays  I  accompanied  my  older  brother  to 
Notre  Dame  de  Fourvi^res.  He  had  infected  me 
with  a  certain  share  of  his  religious  fervor;  he 
dragged  me  to  all  sorts  of  pious  ceremonies  at  the 
church  of  the  Jesuits  and  of  the  Capuchins,  and 
he  urged  me  toward  the  doors  of  the  monastery. 
Our  conversations  related  almost  entirely  to  the 
lives  of  the  blessed,  their  mortifications  and  their 
virtues  whilst  they  were  toiling  up  the  steep  roads 
of  the  holy  mountain. 

We  used  to  stop  at  the  trays  of  the  sellers  of 
pious  objects,  where  ivory  crucifixes,  gold  and 
silver  medals  and  chaplets  displayed  upon  beds  of 
cotton  were  crowded  together  with  scapularies, 
prayer  books  and  a  hundred  eccentric  pamphlets, 
the  product  of  a  sickly  illuminism. 

Along  the  fronts  of  the  booths  garlands  of  im- 
mortelles and  jet  and  bunches  of  holy  candles 
swung  to  and  fro  in  the  wind,  striking  against 
walls  covered  with  prints  very  coarsely  colored. 
These   prints    represented    scenes   from   the   New 


My  Brother  and  I.  341 

Testament,  portraits  of  saints  and  mystical  allegor- 
ies, likewise  a  collection  of  all  the  fungi  known, 
whether  poisonous  or  not;  a  chart  of  all  the  pos- 
sible accidents,  such  as  burns,  stings,  poisonings, 
which  was  finished  up  with  a  statement  how  to 
remedy  them  ;  then  the  "  Mirror  of  the  Soul  filled 
by  Sin,"  a  title  which  was  expressed  by  the  pic- 
ture of  a  heart  in  the  centre  of  which  a  devil  was 
seated  upon  a  throne,  a  sceptre  in  his  hand  and  a 
lot  of  pigs  at  his  feet. 

We  used  to  listen  to  mass  when  we  arrived  at 
the  chapel,  from  whose  roof  hung  thousands  of 
votive  objects  of  the  most  extraordinary  kind, 
grotesque  pictures  and  legs  and  arms  modelled 
in  white  wax;  and  then,  quite  overcome  by  ten- 
der ecstasy,  we  went  and  seated  ourselves  on  the 
terrace  whence  the  most  imposing  panorama 
might  be  seen:  the  hundred  steeples  of  Lyon; 
Bellecour  Place  and  its  square  overlooked  by  the 
monumental  portrait  of  Louis  XIV  by  Coustou ; 
the  Saone  unrolling  its  sinuous  bends  between  the 
fine  quays,  overlooked  on  one  side  by  the  heights 
of  Saint-Foy  and  on  the  other  by  the  rock  of  the 
Chartreux,  the  first  buttress  of  the  Croix-Rousse; 
and  then  the  teeming  suburb  with  its  high  piled 
mass  of  houses,  their  dark  fronts  pierced  with  a 
thousand  windows,  inclosing  the  machines  of  the 
weaving  guild  and  yawning  like  so  many  crev- 
ices opened  down  into  the  abyss  of  misery ;  the 
Rhone  with  its  yellow  flood  which  seemed  to 
hurry  an  entire  city  of  punts,  rafts  and  boats  along 
its  swift  stream  as  far  as  La  Mulatiere,  where  it 


342  Alphonse  Daudet. 

receives  the  Saone  into  its  bed  ;  the  tangled  and 
weather-beaten  beams  of  the  Morand  bridge,  the 
pilons  in  the  shape  of  obelisks  on  the  high  portal 
of  the  college,  the  black  and  heavy  arches  of  the 
Guillotiere  bridge.  Beyond  the  river  lay  enormous 
plains,  here  all  bare  and  there  wooded,  inhabited 
and  deserted,  cut  at  this  point  and  at  that  by  the 
solid  mass  of  forts  edged  with  cannon,  or  by  the 
long  curtains  of  poplars  above  the  green  pathways ; 
and  finally  at  the  very  limits  of  the  horizon,  a  chain 
of  little  hills  which  act  as  fore-runners  to  the 
higher  mountains  of  the  Dauphin^,  whose  snowy 
crests,  steeped  in  the  golden  vapors  of  the  setting 
sun,  brighten  the  horizon  with  a  zigzag  line  of 
silver. 

A  few  months  after  our  arrival  in  Lyon,  on  the 
advice  of  my  eldest  brother,  who  was  just  ofif  to  be- 
gin his  ecclesiastical  study  in  the  Allix  seminary, 
we  were  placed  in  the  matiicanterie  of  Saint-Pierre. 
On  condition  that  we  would  do  the  duty  of  choir 
boys  we  were  allowed  to  continue  our  classes  in 
Greek  and  Latin  there.  My  poor  father  had  not 
found  a  more  practical  means  than  this  to  con- 
tinue our  studies  without  opening  his  purse.  But 
it  was  only  time  lost,  for  religious  ceremonies 
occupied  all  our  waking  hours  and  studies  were 
relegated  to  the  second  place. 

We  had  all  sorts  of  disastrous  adventures  there; 
that  is  the  period  of  my  life  when  I  wept  the  most. 
I  was  awkward  beyond  words !  I  never  was  able 
to  learn  to  serve  at  the  mass  properly;  one  day 
when  I  was  assisting  all  alone  I  got  so  completely 


My  Brother  and  I,  343 

mixed  up  in  the  ceremony  that  I  rang  the  Sanctus 
at  the  Gospels  and  put  all  the  faithful  to  flight. 

Alphonse  too  had  his  own  disasters :  "  One  day 
at  mass  whilst  changing  the  place  of  the  Gospels 
the  big  book  was  so  heavy  that  it  pulled  me  over. 
I  fell  my  entire  length  on  the  steps  of  the  altar. 
The  reading  desk  was  broken  and  the  service  was 
interrupted.  It  was  during  the  Pentecost.  What 
a  scandal  that  was  !  " 

The  worst  of  it  was  that  in  the  complete  upset 
of  that  strange  sort  of  life  my  brother  became  a 
terribly  undisciplined  little  fellow.  What  must  he 
do  one  day,  but  conceive  the  idea  of  digging  a 
mine  in  the  closets  for  the  holy  vestments  and 
pouring  powder  into  it !  Terrible  was  the  explo- 
sion, and  it  was  truly  a  miracle  that  no  accident 
occurred. 

A  little  while  after,  our  parents,  having  per- 
ceived that  we  were  not  learning  anything  worth 
while,  decided  to  put  us  at  college.  We  were  pre- 
sented to  the  proctor  and  after  a  short  examination 
my  brother  was  admitted  to  the  sixth,  whilst  I  was 
placed  in  the  fifth  form. 


344  Alphonse  Daudet. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

It  may  be,  reader,  that  you  think  I  linger  over 
these  memories  of  our  childhood ;  nevertheless 
you  will  have  to  resign  yourself  to  a  further  march 
across  this  melancholy  domain  with  me,  for  it  is 
the  only  means  by  which  you  can  understand  in 
what  circumstances  the  literary  vocation  of  my 
brother  and  myself  ripened.  These  circumstances 
were  unfavorable  in  every  respect.  We  never 
heard  an  allusion  to  things  of  art  and  literature, 
politics,  stories  of  the  past,  a  thousand  incidents 
of  our  life.  Business  affairs  and  the  plans  which 
they  brought  forth,  along  with  the  cares  and 
anxieties  which  they  engendered,  formed  the 
ordinary  topics  at  our  family  meetings. 

My  mother  kept  to  herself  the  impressions  she 
obtained  from  her  reading,  as  if  she  did  not  dare 
to  avow  to  us  the  pleasure  which  she  got  from 
them,  the  only  pleasure  in  the  midst  of  her  trouble 
which  it  was  possible  for  her  to  enjoy. 

So  it  was  not  the  surroundings  in  which  we 
lived  as  children  that  determined  our  vocation ; 
the  only  effects  they  could  have  would  be  to  re- 
buff any  precocious  and  accidental  manifestations. 
But  it  is  probable  that  the  influence  of  these  sur- 


My  Brother  and  I.  345 

foundings  was  attacked  and  overcome  by  the  in- 
fluence of  a  mysterious  heritage :  it  is  probable  that 
from  some  one  of  our  grandparents,  a  Reynaud 
or  a  Daudet,  we  inherit  that  thirst  for  intel- 
lectual sensations,  that  necessity  to  express  them 
with  the  pen  which  is  common  to  us  both,  and 
it  was  from  this  source  my  brother  received  the 
gift  of  observation  which  characterizes  his  talent, 
that  delicate  sensibility  and  that  art  of  writing  he 
possesses  which  give  his  pen  the  power  of  a  brush. 
Whence  came  the  fertile  treasure  of  which  he  had 
complete  possession  the  very  day  when  for  the 
first  time  he  performed  the  author's  part?  which 
one  of  those  from  whom  we  descend  possessed 
that  quality  in  the  remote  past?  I  do  not  know, 
but  what  is  undeniable  is  this,  Alphonse  Daudet 
had  those  qualities,  which  no  one  will  dream  of 
denying  him,  all  of  a  sudden,  at  a  single  moment 
and  as  if  by  some  happy  chance  he  had  found 
them  among  the  frills  and  laces  of  his  cradle. 

Developed  later  by  incessant  and  grinding 
labor,  they  nevertheless  exist  in  his  youthful 
work,  with  less  grandeur  undoubtedly  than  we 
see  in  those  of  his  manhood,  but  ever  there; 
they  even  exist  in  the  only  romance  from  his 
hand  which  has  never  been  published  —  he  was 
fifteen  years  old  when  he  wrote  it  —  to  which  I 
shall  return   presently. 

College  life  did  not  open  to  us  any  vistas  more 
smiling  than  those  which  had  shut  in  our  horizon 
up  to  that  day  :  "  What  struck  me  at  first  on  my 
arrival  at  college,"  wrote  le  Petit  Chose,  "  was  the 


34^  Alphonse  Daudet. 

fact  that  I  alone  was  there  in  a  blouse.  At  Lyon 
the  sons  of  rich  people  do  not  wear  a  blouse,  only 
the  street  children,  the  gones  wear  them,  as  the 
word  was  used.  But  I,  yes,  I  had  one,  a  little 
blouse  with  checks  that  belonged  to  the  days  of 
the  factory ;  I  wore  a  blouse,  I  had  the  look  of  a 
gone." 

That  was  indeed  our  first  sensation  and  our  first 
torture  when  we  entered  the  wide  courtyard  of 
the  college  exactly  in  the  same  guise  as  we 
arrived  from  our  Southern  home,  being  clad  as 
children  of  our  own  age  and  condition  were  used 
to  being  dressed  in  Nimes,  a  town  somewhat  back- 
ward in  such  matters.  At  once  we  were  classified 
by  our  fellow  pupils  with  those  poor  wretches 
whose  parents  sweat  blood  to  pay  the  cost  of 
their  studies.  The  more  elegantly  clad  among 
our  comrades  disdained  to  have  anything  to  do 
with  the  new  arrivals  and  affected  airs  of  haughti- 
ness or  protection  with  us.  A  little  later  we  were 
given  less  humiliating  clothes,  but  the  effect  had 
been  produced  and  the  impression  remained. 
My  brother  overcame  it  victoriously  by  gaining 
the  first  places  in  his  classes  at  the  very  begin- 
ning; from  that  moment  on  he  was  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  students  at  the  college. 

But  a  queer  sort  of  student,  I  can  promise  you  ! 
In  a  very  few  months  the  "  school  of  the  hedges" 
had  become  a  regular  habit  with  him.  During 
the  week  we  had  ten  classes,  but  it  was  very  sel- 
dom that  he  did  not  miss  five  or  six  and  this 
lasted  for  many  years.     He  became  so  bad  that 


My  Brother  and  I.  347 

he  did  not  appear  at  college  save  on  composition 
days,  a  fact,  however,  which  did  not  prevent  him 
from  being  always  classed  among  the  first,  parti- 
cularly in  exact  proportion  with  his  advance  toward 
the  higher  studies. 

His  intelligence  astonished  his  professors. 
From  the  third  form  on  he  treated  subjects  in 
French  composition  in  verse.  Indeed  one  day 
he  was  placed  "  hors  concours "  with  special 
praises.  His  professor  having  asked  him  for  an 
apology  for  Homer,  at  the  end  of  two  hours  he 
gave  him  an  ode  which  constituted  a  real  event. 
Here  is  the  conclusion  —  I  have  forgotten  the 
rest : 

Et  dans  quatre  mille  ans, 
Au  milieu  des  tombeaux  et  des  peuples  croulants, 
Comme  un  sphinx  endormi,  colosse  fait  de  pierre, 
Tu  pourras  soulever  lentement  ta  paupi^re, 
Regarder  le  chaos  et  dire  avec  orgueil : 
Au  vieil  Homfere  il  faut  un  monde  pour  cercueil ! 

The  following  year  he  tried  his  hand  at  another 
sort: 

Rito,  beau  capitaine  au  service  du  doge, 
ttait  un  gai  luron,  I'ceil  bleu,  le  poil  blondin, 
Qui  lorgnait  gentiment  une  belle  en  sa  loge, 
Et  qui  portait  toujours  des  gants  en  peau  de  daim. 
Mainte  fois,  il  avait  tird  I'^p^e,  et  meme 
II  avait  fait,  dit-on,  gras  pendant  le  car&me. 
Dieu  sait  si  les  maris  le  redoutaient !     Rito 
Leur  rendait  fort  souvent  visite  incognito. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  this  poem,  the 
besinnino-  of  which  was  written  in  shorthand  dur- 


348  Alpkonse  Daudet, 

ing  the  class  hour,  in  order  to  conceal  it  from  his 
professor,  was  never  finished. 

I  have  never  yet  been  able  to  explain  to  my- 
self how  it  was,  notwithstanding  the  disorderly 
existence  which  my  brother  continued  at  that 
time,  that  he  was  able  to  climb  with  so  much  glory 
the  steps  of  his  studies. 

At  frequent  intervals  a  printed  warning  signed 
by  the  censor  was  left  with  our  house-porter  to  the 
effect  that  M.  Vincent  Daudet  was  notified 
that  the  pupil  Alphonse  Daudet,  his  son,  had  not 
appeared  at  his  class  on  such  and  such  a  day. 
Thanks  to  my  precautions  these  were  always  faith- 
fully remitted  to  me,  and  I  overcame  their  evil 
effects  by  very  crafty  excuses  which  I  boldly  signed 
with  the  name  of  our  father ! 

And  what  a  lot  of  those  excuses  did  I  not  com- 
pose at  that  time,  in  order  to  let  my  brother  escape 
well-merited  scoldings !  I  did  indeed  attempt  to 
make  up  for  such  scoldings  by  bringing  forward 
timid  counsels,  which  Alphonse  always  met  by  a 
promise  never  to  do  it  again. 

The  trouble  was  that  he  always  did  do  it  again. 
He  was  caught  in  the  trammels  of  a  life  entirely 
outside  the  family  and  school,  as  it  were  without 
watchers  or  bounds. 

There  were  boating  parties  on  the  Saone,  or 
flights  across  the  green  fields  which  surround 
Lyon,  stops  at  taverns  —  what  more  can  I  say  ? 
—  a  thousand  adventures,  fitted  to  reveal  his 
extraordinary  precocity.  Without  knowing  it 
himself,  he  was  gathering  there  impressions  that 


My  Brother  and  I.  349 

would  never  be  effaced  and  with  whose  aid  he 
should  write  out  accounts  of  so  vivid  a  sort  later 
in  life. 

He  came  back  to  us  worn  out  and  pale,  his 
features  all  drawn,  drunk  with  weariness  and  the 
country  air,  his  eyes  filled  with  visions  of  waters 
whirling  and  sliding  through  a  morning  fog.  As 
he  always  came  in  too  late,  I  was  always  anxiously 
watching  the  door  in  order  to  forestall  his  return 
and  open  it  without  noise,  and  then  help  him  to 
arrange  an  explanation  for  our  parents.  As  soon 
as  he  appeared  I  would  let  him  know  in  a  whisper 
what  effect  his  absence  had  appeared  to  make  on 
them;  so  he  knew  whether  they  were  angry  or 
his  absence  had  passed  unnoticed  ;  thus  we  hastily 
improvised  some  acceptable  excuse  according  to 
the  gravity  of  the  case. 

One  day  he  came  in  all  feverish,  staggering 
and  with  a  troubled  look,  for  they  had  made  him 
drink  absinthe.  Greatly  terrified,  I  pushed  him 
up  against  the  wall  of  the  vestibule  and  looking 
him  straight  in  the  eye  I  said  to  him : 

"  Look  out  now,  papa  is  in  there !  " 

He  made  an  effort,  succeeded  in  gaining  com- 
mand of  himself  and  appeared  as  usual  before  our 
parents.  In  order  to  justify  his  tardy  return,  he 
alleged  that  he  had  been  kept  at  the  college  by 
the  visit  of  an  inspector-general  of  universities. 

"  But,  my  dear  child,"  said  my  mother,  "  you 
must  be  dying  of  hunger !  " 

My  father  was  touched  and  observed  that  they 
made  boys  work  too  hard.     Meantime  in  a  jiffy  we 


350"  Alphonse  Daudet. 

had  arranged  a  plate  and  cover  on  the  corner  of 
the  table,  and  though  he  was  sick  at  his  stomach 
and  could  hardly  hold  up  his  head,  the  wretched 
boy  had  to  pretend  to  have  a  voracious  appetite 
and  eat  and  drink  everything  that  was  given  him, 
whilst  our  parents,  who  were  seated  by  his  side, 
looked  upon  him  with  an  air  of  pity  and  spied  out 
every  movement  with  the  deepest  solicitude. 

Hardly  thirteen  years  old  and  thrown  into  such 
a  life  with  children  of  his  own  age,  whose  influ- 
ence and  example  led  him  on,  how  was  it  that  he 
did  not  leave  right  there  his  fine  and  intellectual 
qualities,  the  vivacity  of  his  intelligence,  the  fresh- 
ness of  his  soul,  the  delicacy  of  his  mind  and  his 
native  uprightness,  that  flower  of  his  honor?  In 
a  similar  case  almost  any  other  would  have  been 
lost.  But  in  his  case  the  trial,  which,  to  be  sure,  I 
would  never  advise  any  father  to  place  before  his 
son,  has  furnished  results  contrary  to  those  which 
it  was  logical  that  he  should  fear. 

The  same  phenomenon  occurred  again  some 
years  later  when,  free  and  without  restrictions 
in  the  streets  of  Paris  at  the  time  that  he  was 
only  seventeen,  he  marched  unharmed  through 
all  the  caves  of  Bohemia  among  the  lazy  and 
enervated  and  vagabonds  of  every  sort,  whose 
only  sign  of  activity  consists  in  adding  to  their 
own  number,  in  order  that  they  may  find  in  others 
a  justification  for  their  own  shame  —  fit  at  most 
to  calumniate  a  conscientious  and  fruitful  talent 
and  to  revenge  themselves  upon  him  by  low  abuse 
for   the  humiliations  which  are  the  result   of   an 


My  Brother  and  /.  351 

incurable  necessity  to  wallow  in  the  most  abject 
laziness. 

Such  experiences  have  in  two  cases  given  my 
brother  the  same  result.  Nothing  of  that  which  is 
good  in  him  remains  sticking  to  the  briers  on  those 
perilous  paths  which  he  traversed.  It  is  even  far 
from  bold  to  affirm  that  his  talent  has  profited  in  a 
large  measure  by  the  discoveries  and  temptations 
that  met  him  there.  They  hastened  the  ripening 
of  his  mind,  and  far  from  blunting  him,  on  the 
contrary  refined  him  and  made  him  more  sensi- 
tive, until  they  gave  him  the  nervous  reactibility 
of  a  violin  string. 

Whilst  turning  over  in  his  mind  these  years  full 
of  desperate  wretchedness,  dangerous  escapades 
and  unwholesome  distractions,  which  reappear  to 
him  as  in  a  mirror  across  the  lapse  of  time,  it  came 
to  him  to  place  like  an  epitaph  on  the  title-page 
of  one  of  his  books  the  famous  phrase  left  by 
Mme.  de  Sevigne :  "  One  of  my  worst  troubles 
consists  of  the  memories  which  places  fix  in  my 
mind ;  I  am  affected  by  them  beyond  all  sense 
and  reason."  It  is  with  these  words  that  he  came 
to  express  the  painful  impressionability,  through 
which,  unwillingly,  he  preserved  the  slightest 
episodes  of  his  childhood  and  youth  deeply  en- 
graved on  his  mind  —  the  most  sorrowful  ones 
even  more  living  than  the  others ! 

Although  he  passed  in  triumph  through  so 
many  dangerous  experiences,  the  reader  would 
be  in  error  if  he  supposed  that  the  episodes  of 
his  harum-scarum  life  left  me  without  apprehen- 


352  Alpho7tse  Daudet, 

sion.  Along  with  the  anguish  of  waiting  which 
overcame  me  when  he  did  not  come  home  at  the 
time  the  classes  of  the  college  were  discharged, 
there  was  always  the  fear  of  accident.  He  was 
so  brave  and  disdainful  of  danger;  and  then  his 
short-sightedness  greatly  increased  the  risk ! 

More  than  once  he  succeeded  in  getting  his 
boat  under  the  wheels  of  a  steamer,  and  since, 
when  he  came  back  from  this  adventure,  I  was 
the  confidant  of  his  sensations  at  the  time,  when 
in  the  least  behind  the  hour  I  began  to  see  him 
being  tossed  into  that  cursed  Sa6ne,  whose  stream 
as  it  passes  Lyon  has  quite  as  much  movement  as 
a  populous  street. 

And  then  there  was  also  the  fear  of  carriages 
and  of  blows  received  in  some  quarrel.  Oh, 
what  sorrowful  hours  I  passed !  But  when  I 
perceived  him  coming  I  forgot  everything;  as 
long  as  our  parents  could  be  kept  in  ignorance, 
my  only  thought  was  the  happiness  of  having 
him  back  again  safe  and  sound.  I  did  not  even 
have  courage  enough  to  scold  him.  Our  exist- 
ence was  so  terribly  monotonous  that  I  under- 
stood why  he  sought  distractions  outside. 

True  it  is  that  sometimes  he  turned  to  veritable 
monkey-tricks.  Among  our  comrades  was  a  boy 
of  good  education  but  somewhat  weak  character 
who  allowed  himself  to  be  dragged  like  him  into 
adventures  such  as  I  am  about  to  tell.  He  was 
the  son  of  a  well-placed  lawyer  of  Lyon.  He 
was  of  a  sympathetic  nature  to  all  of  us  and  since 
that  time  has  made  his  way  courageously  through 


My  Brother  and  I.  353 

the  world  without  allowing  the  memory  of  the 
miseries  to  which  he  was  victim  when  a  child  to 
leave  any  bitterness  in  his  heart.  But  at  that  time 
his  figure,  that  had  shot  up  to  uncommon  height, 
his  long  nose  and  round,  staring  eyes,  a  defective 
pronunciation  and  his  natural  naifvete  made  him 
the  butt  for  the  pitiless  raillery  of  those  whose 
comrade  he  had  become. 

A  party  to  all  their  tricks,  it  was  seldom  that  he 
alone  did  not  bear  the  responsibility.  After  some 
escapade  which  was  too  noisy  for  an  echo  to  fail 
to  reach  the  parents,  when  it  was  necessary  to  find 
a  scapegoat,  it  was  he  whom  they  accused,  or  it 
is  better  to  say,  who  unconsciously  and  without 
intending  to,  accused  himself.  And  when  circum- 
stances seemed  to  prove  all  the  others  innocent, 
they  always  turned  to  his  detriment;  when  all 
escaped,  he  alone  allowed  himself  to  be  caught. 

Later  on  it  grew  far  worse.  His  comrades 
organized  a  veritable  conspiracy  against  his  father 
and  thought  it  vastly  funny  to  have  him  as  an  ac- 
complice. Most  decidedly  that  age  is  absolutely 
without  pity !  One  morning  the  highly  honor- 
able attorney  perceived  the  arrival  in  his  kitchen, 
which  was  placed  on  the  same  floor  with  his 
study,  of  a  long  procession  of  little  cook-shop 
boys,  each  one  bringing  a  vol-au-vent.  Some  of 
them  came  from  the  neighborhood  and  others 
from  distant  parts  of  the  town.  They  jostled  each 
other  on  the  stairs,  pushed  and  reviled  each  other, 
each  greatly  surprised  at  finding  so  many  others 
present.     The  cook  received  the  first  vol-au-vent, 

23 


354,  Alphonse  Daudet. 

though  she  herself  had  not  ordered  it,  and  then  a 
second  and  a  third ;  but  when  this  flood  of  white 
aprons  and  caps  set  in  she  went  to  find  her  master. 
The  tableau  may  be  imagined. 

At  that  time  we  had  left  the  apartment  in  Lafont 
Street  because  of  the  cost  of  the  rent.  We  were 
living  in  the  second  story  of  an  old  house  in  the 
Pas-Iitroit  Street,  which  comes  out  upon  the  quays 
of  the  Rhdne ;  it  is  a  badly  paved  street  along 
which  the  college  raises  its  blackened  walls,  and 
these  kept  all  the  light  away  from  us. 

Our  stairs  were  dark  and  damp.  Every  time 
the  river  rose  the  water  came  up  into  our  street 
and  reached  at  least  a  meter  up  our  stairs,  so  that 
for  three  days  at  a  time  we  were  not  able  to  leave 
the  house  except  by  means  of  a  boat.  On  its 
lower  face  the  house  showed  the  traces  of  many 
inundations;  we  had  two  floods  in  three  years. 
The  big  front  door  was  covered  with  dank  spots; 
the  alley  was  full  of  greenish  tones  from  mildew 
and  the  plastering  was  tumbling  everywhere. 

That  was  just  the  spot  arranged  for  poor  people 
and  such  wretched  beings  as  we  were  at  the  time. 
The  apartment  was  a  decent,  spacious  and  com- 
modious one,  but  the  proprietor  leased  it  at  a  low 
price  because  of  the  lamentable  appearance  of  the 
property. 

We  were  living  there  when  the  coup  d'etat  was 
made.  We  were  too  young  to  foresee  all  the  con- 
sequences of  such  an  event  as  that,  and  judged  it 
only  from  the  point  of  view  of  such  amusements 
as  it  might  bring  us  in  its  wake.     Crowds  gathered 


My  Brother  and  I.  355 

round  the  white  placards  containing  proclamations 
and  the  decrees  of  the  Prince-President.  As  a 
usual  thing  the  mob  was  very  sober  in  its  utter- 
ances, for  the  times  were  not  very  healthy  for 
critical  remarks.  Marshal  de  Castellane,  who  was 
in  command  of  Lyon,  had  put  the  city  in  a  state 
of  siege.  Many  arrests  had  been  made  and  troops 
were  encamped  before  big  fires  in  the  streets  all 
along  the  quays  of  the  Rhone.  At  the  entrances 
to  the  bridges  were  cannon  deployed  for  work, 
for  in  that  direction  an  army  of  "  hungry  ones  " 
was  expected  to  arrive  from  the  Swiss  border,  and 
steps  were  taken  to  meet  them. 

The  season  was  very  severe ;  when  night  fell 
the  soldiers  were  shivering  round  their  fires,  and 
since,  after  all,  the  population  of  Lyon  considered 
them  as  defenders  against  dangers  which  were  said 
to  threaten,  they  were  treated  as  friends  and  the 
people  beat  their  brains  for  something  which 
might  add  a  little  pleasure  to  their  ordinary  diet. 
To  please  a  detachment  of  chasseurs  de  Vincennes 
which  was  encamped  in  front  of  the  gateway  of 
the  college,  a  fine  leg  of  mutton  with  string  beans 
was  prepared  expressly  for  their  delectation  in  our 
kitchen,  and  Alphonse  and  I  sallied  proudly  forth 
to  bring  it  to  them,  along  with  several  bottles  of 
wine,  all  of  which  was  accepted  with  the  most  joy- 
ful gratitude. 

But  the  coup  d'etat  was  a  sore  disappointment 
to  our  father,  for  up  to  that  moment  he  had  cher- 
ished the  hope  of  a  speedy  return  of  the  king. 

Called  to  Paris  by  business  a  little  while  before, 


356.  Alphonse  Daudet. 

he  had  been  presented  to  the  chiefs  of  the  Royal- 
ist party.  One  of  them,  invested  with  due  powers 
by  "  Monseigneur,"  had  solemnly  inscribed  in  his 
note-book  the  name  of  Vincent  Daudet  and  those 
of  his  sons,  promising  him  in  reward  for  his  life- 
long fidelity  places  for  him  and  for  them,  when 
the  hour  for  the  legal  and  loyal  revenges  should 
sound. 

A  little  while  afterwards  a  memento  reached  us 
from  Frohsdorf,  namely  a  seal  in  red  wax  com- 
posed of  three  flowers  de  luce  on  a  sheet  of  white 
paper,  with  these  words  round  the  circumference : 
"  Fides,  spes,"  and  underneath,  this  simple  line  of 
mention  :  "  Presented  to  M.  Daudet.     Henri." 

It  was  necessary  now  to  give  up  all  hopes  of  the 
brilliant  future  which  so  many  promises  allowed 
us  to  expect. 

One  morning  we  found  in  the  newspaper  the 
facsimile  of  a  protestation  from  the  Comte  de 
Chambord  which  began  thus  :  "  Frenchmen, 
they  're  deceiving  you  !  "  With  a  quivering  voice 
I  read  it  aloud  to  my  father  who  was  still  in  bed. 
My  mother  wept  a  few  tears  —  barren  tears !  We 
had  crossed  the  threshold  of  the  Empire. 


My  Brother  and  I.  357 


CHAPTER  X. 

The  memory  of  some  of  our  most  cruel  mis- 
fortunes is  associated  with  that  apartment  in 
Pas-Etroit  Street.  After  the  deception  we  ex- 
perienced, which  I  have  just  related,  came  a 
long  sickness  of  my  father,  then  the  departure 
of  Annette,  an  excellent  maid-servant,  who  had 
been  in  our  service  several  years  and  adored  us. 
She  knew  all  the  secrets  of  our  distress  and 
labored  with  the  courage  of  a  heroine  to  make  it 
less  bitter  to  us  by  economizing  our  outlay.  She 
had  followed  us  to  Lyon  in  order  not  to  part 
from  us;  and  although  the  climate  was  murderous 
to  her  health,  she  remained  faithful  to  us.  Dur- 
ing his  sickness  my  father  conceived  a  hatred  for 
her  and  it  was  necessary  to  send  her  away.  When 
he  got  well  he  deplored  his  unjust  attitude  and 
wished  to  bring  her  back;  but  she  had  seen  her 
country's  brilliant  sky  once  more  and  would 
never  return. 

Two  years  before,  finding  that  I  was  doing 
nothing  of  any  account  on  the  school  bench,  and 
tormented  by  I  know  not  what  yearning  for  inde- 
pendence and  emancipation,  urged,  moreover,  by 
a  powerful  desire  for  some   paying   labor,   I  had 


358  Alphonse  Daudet. 

requested  permission  to  leave  college  to  study 
business  and  obtained  my  parents'  consent.  My 
father,  needing  some  one  to  help  him,  kept  me 
with  him ;  so  I  passed  my  apprenticeship  in  busi- 
ness under  his  direction. 

Continuing  to  fabricate  scarfs,  he  had  estab- 
lished a  salesroom  in  the  largest  chamber  that  our 
apartment  afforded.  I  can  see  it  still,  that  melan- 
choly shop  where  I  lived  so  sad  a  life  for  many 
long  months !  To  the  right  and  left  were  long 
planks  on  trestles ;  for  a  desk  there  was  an  open 
board  let  into  the  wall  under  the  window;  and 
hung  from  the  ceiling  were  gigantic  balances  on 
which  silk  was  weighed.  Along  the  walls  were 
four  chairs  and  stands  in  white  wood,  where  the 
scarf  stuffs  were  ranged;  in  one  corner  stood  an 
old  iron-bound  coffer  studded  with  enormous  nail- 
heads,  a  survival  from  the  splendors  of  the  past  — 
that  was  all  of  this  somewhat  primitive  instal- 
lation ! 

How  many  hours  I  have  passed  in  that  room, 
folding  up  the  merchandise,  writing  letters,  mak- 
ing out  bills  and  doing  up  parcels !  We  labored 
hard,  m)^  father  and  I,  just  like  two  diggers  of  the 
soil.  With  the  exception  of  lading  our  boxes  on 
our  own  shoulders,  I  hardly  see  what  there  was 
that  we  left  to  the  porter  who  helped  us.  Still, 
neither  one  nor  the  other  dreamt  of  complaining; 
we  were  well  paid  when  a  client  appeared. 

Clients  would  not  have  been  lacking,  for  the 
output  of  our  house  had  the  reputation  of  being 
beautiful,  " carefully  made  and  cheap;"  but  what 


My  Brother  and  I.  359 

was  lacking  was  money,  capital,  the  possibility  of 
supplying  the  advances  which  our  business  de- 
manded. At  any  moment  it  was  necessary  to  cut 
short  fabrication  when  it  was  absolutely  necessary 
to  increase  it.  At  other  times,  when  with  great 
effort  we  had  filled  the  shelves  with  merchandise, 
sales  suddenly  stopped,  owing  to  the  prevalence 
of  some  accidental  crisis,  and  we  were  left  with- 
out any  receipts,  after  having  exhausted  all  our 
resources  in  advance  payments. 

Oh,  what  burning  cares  in  that  march  which 
staggered  on  between  failure  and  protested  notes ! 
How  can  I  relate  the  anguish  of  the  days  when 
notes  fell  due.-*  They  always  came  too  soon. 
The  little  note-book  in  which  the  bills  to  pay 
were  inscribed  recalled  them  ever  to  our  minds. 
With  beating  hearts  we  saw  the  day  approach 
and  reckoned  on  some  buyer,  who  never  came, 
in  order  to  meet  it.  Often  we  were  taken  unex- 
pectedly. Then  we  threw  two  or  three  hundred 
pieces  into  a  box  in  a  hurry.  A  porter  took  the 
box  on  his  shoulder  and  off  we  went  to  merchants 
whose  entire  business  it  was  to  take  advantage  of 
the  difficulties  of  the  silk-weavers  when  at  bay. 
Shame  on  one's  brow  and  anger  in  one's  heart, 
enough  was  sold  to  them  at  the  lowest  price  in 
order  to  meet  the  note  falling  due  that  day. 
People  scarcely  become  wealthy  at  a  business  of 
that  sort. 

After  a  multitude  of  ruinous  operations  had 
opened  the  gulf  into  which  we  were  about  to  fall, 
the  protests  arrived  —  protests  and  their  humili- 


360  Alphonse  Daudet, 

ating  sequels.  One  morning  —  I  can  remember 
it  as  if  it  were  yesterday  —  about  seven  o'clock, 
three  men,  obsequious  in  their  manner,  entered 
the  shop.  It  was  a  bailiff  and  his  assistants. 
They  came  to  make  a  seizure  in  consequence  of 
a  verdict  pronounced  by  the  tribunal  of  commerce 
because  of  an  unpaid  draft. 

My  mother,  who  was  ill  that  day,  was  still  in 
bed ;  my  father  was  shaving  himself  before  the 
window  in  the  shop;  I  was  writing  a  letter  and 
my  brother  was  putting  a  last  touch  to  his  lessons 
before  leaving  for  the  college.  One  may  imagine, 
without  the  necessity  of  describing  it,  what  an 
effect  the  apparition  of  the  men  of  law  in  our 
home,  so  peaceful  in  its  monotony,  produced ! 

On  that  day  for  the  first  time  I  had  a  manly 
idea  of  taking  the  initiative.  Whilst  my  poor 
father  was  parleying,  very  pale,  half  his  face 
covered  with  soap  and  his  razor  in  his  hand, 
hoping  to  defend  his  threatened  hearth,  I  flew  off 
like  an  arrow  to  look  for  help. 

Among  the  merchants  of  Lyons  with  whom  we 
had  had  business  connections  was  one  who  had 
known  us  during  more  fortunate  years.  Our  mis- 
fortunes had  not  destroyed  his  sympathy  for  us. 
All  of  a  sudden  his  name  presented  itself  to  my 
memory.  Half  out  of  my  mind,  I  reached  his 
house. 

"Oh,  sir,"  said  I  to  him,  "do  come  to  our  house 
right  away ! " 

I  was  so  upset  and  so  pale  that  he  did  not  ask 
any  questions,  but  took  his  hat  and  followed  me. 


My  Brother  and  I,  361 

On  the  way  I  related  to  him  what  had  happened 
to  us  and  told  him  what  I  hoped  he  could  do  for 
us.  He  was  the  friend  of  our  creditor  and  his 
intervention  might  save  us. 

When  he  reached  the  house  he  sent  the  bailiffs 
packing ;  to  the  great  despair  of  my  mother,  they 
had  begun  to  take  an  inventory  of  our  furniture; 
then  he  had  a  talk  with  my  father.  At  the  end 
of  an  hour  we  got  an  assurance  that  further  action 
should  not  be  taken  against  us,  but  our  creditor 
would  consent  to  give  us  time  to  clear  ourselves 
of  the  debt. 

The  kind  man  to  whom  I  had  appealed  ren- 
dered us  the  service  with  a  discreet  simplicity 
which  greatly  increased  its  value.  He  kept  our 
secret  absolutely,  even  as  regards  his  own  family. 
Many  years  after,  in  January  of  1871,  whilst  pass- 
ing through  Geneva  on  the  day  after  the  armistice 
was  signed,  and  at  the  time  that  the  army  of  the 
East  had  just  retired  into  Switzerland,  I  met  in 
the  streets  of  that  town  a  poor  little  soldier  of  the 
line,  hollow-cheeked,  ragged  and  dragging  his 
bruised  feet  with  difficulty  one  after  the  other. 
He  recognized  me  and  calling  to  me  gave  me 
his  name.  It  was  the  son  of  our  savior.  I  took 
him  to  my  hotel  and  lavished  on  him  all  the  care 
which  his  condition  of  health  demanded ;  but  the 
dear  boy  had  no  idea  that,  in  addition  to  the 
pleasure  of  helping  this  French  soldier,  there  was 
for  me  the  further  satisfaction  of  paying  a  sacred 
debt. 

Alas,    would   that   our  misfortunes    had    been 


362  Alphonse  Daudet. 

limited  to  such  touching  trials  as  these!  But 
they  went  on  growing  more  complicated  and  in- 
volved, so  that  the  chapter  may  be  called  actually 
endless. 

After  the  departure  of  the  good,  kind  Annette, 
who  had  been  sent  back  to  the  South  as  I  have 
related,  her  place  was  taken  by  a  solid,  hard- 
working woman  from  Auvergne.  But  little  as  the 
expense  was  which  she  involved,  it  was  necessary 
to  renounce  even  that.  Then  a  woman  was  hired 
to  do  the  coarse  work  of  the  household  and  our 
dear  mother  employed  her  white  hands  in  the 
kitchen  and  installed  me  as  purveyor. 

Every  morning,  after  a  short  talk  with  her,  I 
started  off  for  the  marketing,  a  basket  under  my 
arm.  I  was  somewhat  humiliated  by  my  part  and 
attempted  to  put  on  the  airs  of  a  little  rich  boy 
who  was  playing  at  being  a  servant ;  and  it  seemed 
that  I  knew  how  to  buy  very  well.  Before  I  left 
I  went  to  the  iron-bound  coffer  to  get  the  money. 

Ah,  that  old  coffer,  I  see  it  ever  in  my  mind ! 
It  might  have  contained  in  its  depth  and  width  a 
whole  fortune;  but,  through  the  acrid  irony  of 
fate,  it  was  always  empty.  The  key  remained  in 
the  lock;  they  even  neglected  to  shut  the  door. 
On  one  of  the  boards  within  my  father  placed 
from  time  to  time  a  pile  of  silver  pieces.  I  took 
money  thence,  full  of  perplexity;  a  cold  sweat 
bathed  my  forehead  just  in  proportion  as  this 
slender  pile  grew  less  and  less. 

One  day  the  last  piece  in  the  last  pile  was  gone 
and  its  place  remained  empty.     It  was  necessary 


My  Brother  and  I.  363 

to  turn  to  any  expedient  possible,  to  the  pawn- 
shop for  example,  whither  I  carried  in  suc- 
cession every  piece  of  old  silver,  the  jewels 
belonging  to  my  mother  and  everything  which 
we  had  saved  from  former  shipwrecks.  At  my 
first  visit  to  an  official  at  the  government  pawn- 
shop I  had  interested  him  in  our  misfortunes  by 
proudly  insisting,  contrary  to  the  truth,  that  our 
dilemma  was  only  for  the  moment.  In  that  way 
I  obtained  permission  to  come  to  him  through  a 
door  apart  and  wait  for  him  in  a  little  room, 
without  being  compelled  to  mingle  with  the  mob 
of  poverty-stricken  wretches  that  pushed  about  his 
wicket. 

Oh,  days  of  blackest  misery,  what  wrinkles  you 
have  carved  in  our  memories !  What  a  preco- 
cious ripening  did  you  not  cause  our  souls  to 
undergo !  Yes,  indeed,  we  became  men  at  a  very 
early  hour,  through  having  lived  with  adversity. 
Much  less  would  have  produced  the  same  result ! 
The  soul  of  a  child  steels  itself  quickly  under 
such  harsh  trials. 

But  experience  which  is  bought  at  that  price,  by 
the  sacrifice  of  the  illusions  and  joys  of  youth,  is 
so  painful  that  I  would  wish  no  one  to  gain  it  so 
dearly.  The  anxieties  and  tears  of  those  whom 
you  love,  the  despairing  pursuit  after  money,  pro- 
found and  hidden  distress,  shame  at  urgent  beg- 
ging prayers,  early  morning  visits  to  the  priest  of 
the  parish,  the  first  and  only  person  to  whom  one 
dares  tell  everything,  the  anguish  of  hours  of 
waiting  which  follow  demands,  the  answers  which 


364  Alphonse  Daudet 

never  come,  the  uncertainty  as  to  the  morrow, 
the  whole  horizon  without  a  bright  point  —  reader, 
God  keep  you  from  such  trials ! 

Owing  to  this  persistency  of  bad  luck,  the  con- 
clusion was  come  to  that  there  was  no  place  for 
me  in  my  father's  business  and  that  it  would  be 
prudent  to  leave  me  free  to  gain  my  livelihood  in 
some  other  direction.  So  I  was  permitted  to  look 
out  for  work  and  I  found  a  place  at  first  in  the 
government  pawnshop  of  Lyons. 

The  place  owed  us  that  at  least !  As  a  super- 
numerary I  earned  the  bread  which  I  ate  at  my 
parent's  house  to  the  extent  of  three  francs  a  day. 
Seated  between  two  appraisers  behind  a  wicket,  I 
made  investigations  under  their  orders.  Ah, 
how  many  sad  looks  and  long  faces,  how  many 
poor,  thin  hands  holding  out  a  little  parcel  of 
wretched  clothes  in  shame,  have  I  not  seen 
through  the  narrow  square  opening  of  the  grille 
which  separated  us  from  the  public! 

The  evening  of  the  day  on  which,  for  the  first 
time,  I  was  a  spectator  of  this  heart-rending 
scene,  I  said  to  our  mother: 

"There  are  people  more  unhappy  than  we  are." 

At  the  end  of  a  few  months  I  left  the  pawnshop, 
sick,  as  it  were  poisoned  by  the  pestiferous  air 
I  had  inhaled  between  walls  impregnated  with 
all  the  unwholesome  odors  which  disengage  them- 
selves from  these  pledged  objects.  A  more  lucra- 
tive place  had  been  offered  me  —  the  position 
as  a  clerk  with  Descours,  a  man  who  let  car- 
riages and  wagons.     As  a  beginning  they  put  me 


My  Brother  and  I.  365 

to  work  on  the  carrier's  letters.  I  have  filled  up 
hundreds  of  those  leaflets  bearing  the  Imperial 
stamp,  at  the  head  of  which  can  be  read,  printed 
by  lithography,  the  old  formula :  "  Under  the 
hand  of  God  and  in  the  charge  of  So-and-So, 
public  carrier.   ..." 

My  work  was  hard;  it  kept  me  at  the  office, 
very  often,  to  a  very  late  hour  of  the  night.  But 
at  any  rate  the  remuneration  was  proportionate 
with  the  work  and  the  surroundings  were  more 
human,  healthier,  less  sorrowful  than  those  at  the 
pawnshop. 

M.  Descours  was  an  excellent  man  and  showed 
me  kindness ;  whilst  my  comrades  treated  me  as 
a  person  superior  to  my  condition,  who  had  been 
accidentally  thrown  amongst  them,  but  was  des- 
tined to  leave  them  some  day  in  order  to  rise 
higher. 


366  Alphonse  Daudet, 


CHAPTER   XI. 

My  brother  was  then  fifteen  years  old  and  was 
just  finishing  his  "humanities,"  whilst  I  was 
eighteen.  All  the  spare  time  which  his  studies 
allowed  him,  for  his  life  was  at  once  full  of  excite- 
ment and  work,  and  all  that  my  office  work  per- 
mitted me  were  absorbed  by  our  literary  dreams. 

Neither  one  nor  the  other  of  us  had  stated  in 
so  many  words  that  we  proposed  to  give  our  life 
to  letters.  But  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  the 
more  our  circumstances  persisted  in  separating  us 
from  that  career  into  which  we  afterward  em- 
barked, the  more  a  mysterious  call  made  itself 
heard  in  us  and  prepared  us  for  it. 

It  dated  from  as  early  a  moment  as  our  arrival 
in  Pas-Etroit  Street.  On  the  same  floor  with 
us  there  lived  with  his  parents  a  certain  young 
man  about  our  own  age ;  we  knew  him  at  the 
college  before  we  were  aware  he  was  our  neighbor. 
When  we  had  become  close  friends,  he  confessed 
to  us  that  he  was  a  poet ;  already  he  had  composed 
several  hundred  verses  and  he  made  a  collection 
of  poems  with  the  greatest  fastidiousness,  copy- 
ing them  in  fine,  round  script  into  an  album  with 
black   morocco   covers    and    broad    gold    edges. 


My  Brother  and  I.  367 

Since  he  was  brought  up  upon  the  Orientales  and 
the  Odes  et  Ballades,  his  productions  consisted  of 
scarcely  anything  better  than  more  or  less  suc- 
cessful imitations  of  Victor  Hugo.  But  our  ad- 
miration could  not  be  killed  by  such  a  slight  thing 
as  that ;  we  knew  his  verses  by  heart  and  spouted 
them  in  chorus  with  him. 

En  avant !  en  avant !  Ddjk  la  blonde  aurore 
A,  de  ses  doigts  ros^s,  entr'ouvert  I'Orient ! 
En  avant !  en  avant !  Le  ciel  qui  se  colore 
De  ses  premiers  rayons  d^jh.  jaunit  et  dore 
Le  faite  ardoisd  du  convent. 

My  brother  had  already  made  verses  and, 
encouraged  by  his  neighbor's  example,  he  con- 
tinued to  make  them.  You  may  still  read  some 
of  them  dating  from  that  period  in  Les  Amou- 
reuses,  in  which,  three  years  later,  he  thought 
them  worthy  to  figure.  I  fell  into  the  same  vein 
and  beneath  the  sway  of  my  mystical  aspirations 
which,  for  a  long  time,  left  a  deep  trace  in  my 
spirit,  I  sketched  a  poem  on  religion.  The  soli- 
tary stanza  which  I  wrote  is  given  complete  in  Le 
Petit  Chose  and  it  is  so  delightfully  made  fun  of 
there  that  I  have  won  the  right  to  talk  of  it  with- 
out laughing. 

Then,  after  having  devoured  the  poems  of 
Ossian  and  the  tragedies  of  Ducis  in  imitation  of 
Shakespeare,  I  also  desired  to  write  tragedy.  I 
arranged  a  plot.  It  began  in  a  forest  of  Corn- 
wall, the  evening  before  a  combat.  My  brother 
lent  me  the  first  line: 
Du  sang !  Partout  du  sang !  Chaque  arbre,  chaque  feuille  . . . 


368  Alphonse  Daudet. 

But  I  was  never  able  to  supply  the  second  line 
and  my  tragedy  stayed  where  it  was.  I  dropped 
verses  and  turned  to  prose.  Alphonse  turned 
the  same  way,  but  without  abandoning  rhymes. 
It  was  at  that  time  he  composed  La  Vierge  d  la 
Crhhe  :  — 

Dans  ses  langes  blancs,  fratchement  cousus, 

La  Vierge  bercait  son  enfant  Jdsus  ; 

Lui  gazouillait  comme  un  nid  de  m^sanges ; 

Elle  le  bercait  et  chantait  tout  bas 

Ce  que  nous  chantons  k  ces  petits  anges  ! 

Mais  I'enfant  J^sus  ne  s'endormait  pas  ! 

Estonn^,  ravi  de  ce  qu'il  entend, 

II  fit  dans  sa  creche,  et  s'en  va  chantant; 

Comme  un  saint  Invite  et  comme  un  choriste 

II  bat  la  mesure  avec  ses  deux  bras, 

Et  la  Sainte  Vierge  est  triste,  bien  triste, 

De  voir  son  Jdsus  qui  ne  s'endort  pas. 

To  the  same  period  belongs,  moreover,  Les 
Petits  Enfants  : 

Enfants  d'un  jour,  6  nouveau-nds ! 
Petites  bouches,  petits  nez, 
Petites  levres  demi-closes, 

Membres  tremblants, 

Si  frais,  si  blancs, 
Si  roses ! 

Enfants  d'un  jour,  5  nouveau-nds  ! 
Pour  le  bonheur  que  vous  donnez 
A  vous  voir  dormir  dans  vos  langes, 

Espoir  des  nids, 

Soyez  bdnis, 
Chers  anges ! 


My  Brother  and  I.  369 

Pour  tout  ce  que  vous  gazouillez 

Soyez  benis,  baisds,  choyes. 

Gais  rossignols,  blanches  fauvettes, 

Que  d'ainoureux 

Et  que  d'heureux 
Vous  faites ! 

That  is  the  way  my  brother  made  his  prelude  to 
the  vast  number  of  pages  written,  later,  amid  the 
tumult  of  those  ardent  battles  in  which  he  was 
engaged  for  life  and  for  glory,  all  in  the  thick  of 
Paris  and  in  the  full  tide  of  modernity. 

Things  of  this  sort  occurred  to  him  on  his  re- 
turn from  a  trip  in  his  canoe,  or  coming  out  of  his 
classroom,  or  else  after  some  feverish  evening  in 
a  room  hired  in  secret  along  with  some  of  his 
comrades  in  order  to  practise  at  Lyon  their 
apprenticeship  to  the  Quartier  Latin  of  Paris. 

To  the  renown  of  their  author,  the  verses  have 
survived  the  period  which  caused  them  to  appear; 
but  where  are  those  who,  along  with  me,  were 
the  first  to  hear  them  read  ?  Whither  have  they 
flown,  those  companions  of  our  youthful  years, 
those  witnesses  to  the  upspringing  of  a  poet's 
soul  and  the  unloosing  of  our  budding  passions, 
over-excited  by  the  precocious  and  unhealthy 
labor  of  our  youthful  imaginations,  driven  toward 
the  most  flattering  ideals  ?  We  have  found  some 
of  them  again ;  but  the  others,  are  they  dead .-' 
are  they  living?  And  if  they  are  alive,  have 
they  preserved  the  recollection  of  our  fantastic 
preparations  for  the  accomplishment  of  the  solemn 
duties  of  life.-' 

24 


370  Alpkonse  Daudet, 

Prior  to  this  flight  toward  literature,  that  taste 
for  books  which  we  had  whilst  still  children,  just 
as  our  mother  before  us,  had  developed  itself  with 
a  singular  power  within  us. 

At  the  old  factory,  coincident  with  the  first 
dawning  of  his  intelligence,  my  brother  never 
closed  his  Robinson  Crusoe  except  to  revive  in 
his  games  the  adventurous  epic  of  his  hero;  recol- 
lections of  a  Szviss  Fatnily  Robinson,  read  and 
re-read  again  and  again,  were  also  inspiration  for 
our  imaginations.  Then  a  strip  of  turf  became  a 
desert  island,  the  peaches  and  figs  against  the 
wall  were  transformed  into  guavas  and  bananas 
and  our  dog  Lotan  became  a  famished  and  blood- 
thirsty lion.  All  the  books  we  read  were  turned 
into  action  and  our  minds  became  accustomed  to 
absorb  and  retain  everything.  And  when  we  be- 
gan to  write  we  did  not  stop  reading,  but  quite  the 
contrary.  Only  we  passed  from  Le  College  In- 
ccndii  and  Pctits  B Jamais  and  the  Journal  des 
Enfants  to  Han  d'  Islande  and  Les  My  stores  de 
Paris  and  Lcs  Burgraves. 

At  that  time,  within  the  buildings  belonging 
to  the  college  on  the  Quay  de  Retz  was  an  old 
bookseller  named  Gaspet,  who  lived  at  the  ex- 
tremity of  a  narrow  shop.  Long  hours  were 
passed  in  his  place,  standing  before  the  shelves 
crammed  with  all  sorts  of  worn  and  dusty  vol- 
umes. He  had  books  of  every  period,  ancient  and 
modern,  good  and  bad,  the  old  classics,  the  liber- 
tine authors  of  the  eighteenth  century,  novels, 
medical  and  scientific  books;    we  turned   every- 


My  Brother  a7id  I.  371 

thing  over,  standing  up  and  in  a  hurry,  quickly 
whisking  over  the  leaves  to  ferret  out  the  interest- 
ing passages. 

Then  we  made  a  few  purchases  and  exchanges 
—  quite  a  bookseller's  business  —  by  means  of 
which  we  got  by  turns  Buffon,  Ariosto,  Shake- 
speare, Boccaccio,  Piron,  the  Abb^  de  Chaulieu, 
Vicomte  d'Arlincourt,  Lamartine,  Chateaubriand, 
Pigault-Lebrun  —  works  of  the  greatest  variety 
that  were  bolted  rather  than  read  in  pursuit  of 
our  boyish  curiosity,  which  was  eager  to  penetrate 
the  secrets  our  studies  had  not  revealed  to  us. 

Later,  when  my  brother  had  left  me,  as  I  shall 
soon  relate,  I  continued  to  read  and  buy  books 
with  the  savings  laboriously  brought  together  — 
works  of  modern  authors  in  editions  illustrated  by 
Bertall,  Riou,  Janet-Lange,  Philippoteaux,  Gus- 
tave  Dore,  who  was  a  master  at  twenty  years,  and 
a  hundred  others.  That  is  the  way  I  learned  to 
know  Balzac,  George  Sand,  Frederic  Soulie, 
Eugene  Sue,  L6on  Gozlan,  Mery,  Charles  de 
Bernard,  Alphonse  Karr,  Henry  Murger.  Then 
came  the  time  of  Le  Jottmal  pour  Tons.  That 
opened  the  English  novels  to  me  —  Dickens  and 
Thackeray,  whom  my  brother  was  to  know  later 
in  Paris,  along  with  Champfleury,  who  initiated 
me  into  the  methods  of  realism,  a  far  from  modest 
forerunner  of  naturalism  and  a  not  less  noisy  one. 

And  finally  through  the  Revue  des  Detix  Mondes 
and  the  Revue  de  Paris,  which  I  found  in  the 
reading-room,  I  became  acquainted  with  Octave 
Feuillet,  Amedee  Achard,  Louis  Ulbach  and  the 


372  Alphonse  Daudet 

master  Gustave  Flaubert  whilst  at  the  same 
time  in  the  midst  of  indecisions  and  gropings 
my  literary  ideas  were  fixed  by  Sainte-Beuve, 
Gustave  Planche,  Armand  de  Pontmartin,  Fioren- 
tino  and  Jules  Janin. 

As  a  final  touch  to  this  unconscious  prepara- 
tion for  our  entrance  into  the  field  of  letters  the 
biographies  by  Eugene  de  Mirecourt,  the  success 
of  which  was  so  great  in  the  provinces,  intro- 
duced me  to  the  world  of  writers;  despite  the  fact 
that  they  contained  much  that  was  untrue  and 
calumnious,  they  filled  my  mind  with  a  thousand 
characteristics  which  familiarized  me  with  the 
personalities  of  those  men  whose  works  we  had 
admired. 

What  a  lot  we  did  read  in  those  distant  years! 
Of  an  evening,  when  everything  was  quiet  about 
us,  a  lamp,  placed  near  the  bed  which  we  occupied 
in  brotherly  union,  lit  up  our  long  night  watches. 
The  family  thought  we  were  asleep;  and  from 
her  distant  bed-chamber  our  mother  would  call 
to  us  again  and  again  in  order  to  make  certain 
that  our  light  was  quenched.  But  we  took  good 
care  not  to  answer;  we  held  our  breath  and 
turned  the  leaves  noiselessly  and,  thanks  to  our 
precautions,  we  plunged  freely  into  long  conver- 
sations in  place  of  sleep,  talks  which  stimulated, 
little  by  little,  the  fertility  of  our  minds. 

My  father's  political  connections  had  opened  to 
us  the  editorial  office  of  the  Gazette  de  Lyon. 
This  newspaper,  consecrated  to  the  defence  of  the 
legitimacy   of   the    Bourbons,    was    managed   by 


My  Brother  and  I.  373 

Theodore  Mayery,  a  journalist  with  no  great 
intellectual  culture,  but  of  a  forcible  and  acrid 
temperament.  He  wrote  in  a  tumultuous,  tor- 
mented, bellowing  style.  His  writing  being 
filled  with  slag  and  savage  as  his  own  soul,  his 
articles  were  of  the  hurrah-boy  sort,  but  full  of 
new  vistas  and  striking  from  their  uncommon 
originality. 

Under  his  orders  stood  Paul  Beurtheret,  a  noisy 
and  kind-hearted  fellow  from  the  Franche-Comt^, 
who  was  as  cultivated  a  literary  man  as  Mayery 
was  lacking  in  that  particular;  under  a  broad 
joviality  of  a  fine  sort  he  concealed  a  sensitive 
nature,  an  honest  heart,  a  proud  independence 
and  an  energetic  sincerity  in  his  convictions. 

Called  to  the  management  of  the  France  Centrale 
at  Blois,  Paul  Beurtheret  came,  later,  to  Paris, 
drawn  thither  by  Villemessant,  who  employed 
him  as  secretary  in  the  editorship  of  the  Figaro. 
But  his  taste  for  a  free  and  independent  life  could 
not  accommodate  itself  to  the  needs  of  Parisian 
journalism  and  the  demands  of  an  enslaving  trade. 
He  was  taken  with  home-sickness  for  his  prov- 
ince. He  left  and  went  to  Tours  to  establish  the 
Union  Liberate,  one  of  the  most  brilliant  organs 
of  the  opposition  toward  the  end  of  the  empire. 
In  that  city  he  was  killed  during  the  war  on  the 
day  the  Germans  entered,  his  head  being  carried 
off  by  a  bomb-shell.  He  was  a  faithful  friend  to 
us;  he  had  foreseen  the  budding  talent  of  my 
brother  and  felt  no  little  pride  in  it. 

The  notabilities  of  the  Royalist  party  closed  in 


374  Alphonse  Daudet, 

about  the  Gazette  de  Lyon  —  Leopold  de  Gail  lard, 
who  was  made  Councillor  of  State  by  the  National 
Assembly,  Charles  de  Saint-Priest,  the  friend  and 
agent  of  the  Comte  de  Chambord,  Pierre  de  Valous, 
curator  of  the  library  at  Saint-Pierre  Palace,  the 
two  Penins,  father  and  son,  both  of  them  steel 
and  copper  engravers,  and  the  sculptor  Fabisch. 

There  we  also  met  with  Claudius  H6brard,  a 
Lyon  citizen  transferred  to  Paris,  where  he  had 
become  the  titulary  poet  of  the  meetings  of  Cath- 
olic working  men.  A  bard  quite  solitary  in  his 
kind,  toward  whom  the  Royalist  party  has  shown 
ingratitude,  he  went  to  religious  meetings  of  the 
people  and  recited  there  various  verses  which  he 
improvised  with  too  much  facility  and  which  have 
not  survived  the  circumstances  that  inspired 
them. 

Although  he  lived  in  Paris,  he  edited  a  monthly 
periodical  which  appeared  at  Lyon  under  the 
title  oi  Journal  dcs  Bons  Exeniples :  it  was  that 
which  very  often  brought  H6brard  back  to  his 
native  town. 

At  the  time  he  was  in  all  the  splendor  of  his 
passing  notoriety  and,  owing  to  our  ignorance  of 
degrees  and  classifications  in  literature,  he  real- 
ized in  our  eyes  the  finished  type  of  the  man  of 
letters. 

We  were  very  grateful  for  his  natural  kindli- 
ness, which  made  him  treat  us,  young,  timid  and 
obscure  as  we  were,  like  comrades.  And  then  he 
brought  with  him  that  fragrance  of  Paris  which 
we  inhaled  with  vast  delight. 


My  Brother  and  I.  2>7S 


CHAPTER  XII. 

Introduced  into  these  surroundings  of  Royalism 
and  literature,  we  met  a  kindly  welcome  and  as 
much  encouragement  as  if  we  were  about  to 
become  the  hope  of  the  party.  When  I  was  a 
clerk  with  Descours,  I  had  written  in  secret  some 
articles  of  literary  criticism,  penning  them  in  a 
fragmentary  way  between  two  carriage  blanks  to 
be  filled  up.  The  Gazette  received  them  and 
printed  them ;  from  that  time  on  I  became  quite 
one  of  the  staff.  At  the  suggestion  of  Claudius 
Hebrard,  I  wrote  in  the  same  fragmentary  way  a 
novel  which  I  have  absolutely  forgotten,  even  to 
its  subject.  I  sent  it  to  the  Journal  des  Bons 
Exemples  which  did  not  publish  it  and  neglected 
to  send  it  back.  Notwithstanding  these  attempts, 
my  family  scarcely  believed  in  my  vocation.  Dur- 
ing the  few  moments  which  my  office  work  left 
me  I  heard  my  father  and  mother  exclaiming 
without  cessation:  "Stick  to  money  figures." 
Alas,  those  miserable  sums!  My  brother  was 
luckier,  because  under  pretext  of  study  he  could 
devote  himself  freely  to  his  natural  bent.  He 
took  advantage  of  it  by  writing  a  novel  in  his 
own  turn.     His  work  was  called  L^o  et  Chretienne 


376  Alp  house  Daudet 

Fleury;  it  was  the  story  of  a  young  soldier  whom 
a  strong  devotion  to  his  family  had  led  into  an 
adventure  which  was  considered  a  criminal  lack  of 
discipline  by  his  superiors.  He  died  under  the 
guns  of  a  patrol  and  almost  beneath  the  eyes  of 
his  mother  and  sister,  who  had  come  too  late  to 
save  him. 

The  story  began  with  a  dozen  letters  exchanged 
between  his  brother  and  sister.  Whatever  there 
lay  of  grace,  brightness,  freshness  of  heart  and 
originality  of  style  in  Alphonse  Daudet  made  its 
appearance  in  this  correspondence.  The  story 
which  forms  the  second  part  was  saturated  with 
emotion  and  entirely  impregnated  with  the  sweet 
perfume  of  youth  and  tenderness. 

One  evening  my  brother  read  this  novel  to  the 
assembled  family.  We  wept  as  we  listened  and, 
wild  with  enthusiasm,  I  ran  to  offer  the  manu- 
script to  Mayery.  He  was  thunderstruck.  What ! 
a  collegian  fifteen  years  old  had  written  such 
exquisite  pages .<*  It  was  not  to  be  believed! 
Nevertheless  he  was  forced  to  give  way  before 
the  proofs  and  promised  to  publish  the  romance 
in  the  Gazette  de  Lyon  as  soon  as  the  author  had 
made  a  slight  change  which  he  thought  necessary 
for  the  interest  of  the  story. 

From  that  moment  to  this,  what  has  happened 
to  the  masterpiece  1  I  have  forgot.  Undoubtedly 
Mayery  kept  it  among  his  papers;  but  we  were 
prevented  from  getting  it  back  from  him  by  cer- 
tain incidents  which  intervened  and  hurried  for- 
ward the  course  of  our  destiny.      And  since  the 


My  Brother  aftd  I.  2>77 

Gazette  was  suppressed  soon  after,  it  is  probable 
that  the  manuscript  was  lost. 

Though  twenty-five  years  have  elapsed  since 
then,  the  impression  left  upon  my  memory  by  Z/<? 
et  Chritienne  Fleury  has  remained  vivid  enough  to 
give  me  the  right  to  say,  that  if  that  novel  had 
been  published  it  would  have  been  entirely  worthy 
of  a  place  in  a  collection  of  my  brother's  work. 
This  is  a  fact  that  one  may  properly  insist  upon, 
for  it  is  a  confirmation  of  everything  that  is 
known  concerning  Alphonse  Daudet's  talents, 
among  the  high  qualities  of  which,  when  its 
origins  and  first  manifestations  are  examined,  an 
extraordinary  precocity  must  be  noted. 

Other  studies  in  verse  or  prose  which  date  from 
the  same  time  may  be  found  in  his  books.  If  one 
considers  the  age  at  which  they  were  written, 
they  are  the  productions  of  a  child ;  but  judged 
by  their  intrinsic  merit  they  are  the  work  of  an 
able  craftsman  who  has  acquired  the  knowledge 
of  his  trade  without  an  effort  and  possesses  it  in 
a  certain  way  as  a  natural  gift.  This  privilege 
of  destiny  has  been  worthily  used  by  my  brother; 
he  has  earned  it  by  the  ardor  of  his  constant 
struggle  for  better  work,  by  a  self-criticism  which 
urges  him  to  carve  and  model  his  inspirations 
with  the  most  tenacious  patience  and  by  the 
respect  he  shows  his  reader  and  his  own  talent 
—  a  respect  which  makes  him  sufficiently  master 
of  himself  to  refuse  to  permit  a  page  to  leave  his 
hands  before  he  has  expended  upon  it  the  full 
force  of  his  genius  for  improvement.     And  it  may 


378  Alphonse  Daudet. 

be  said  that  he  has  nothing  to  regret  in  what  he 
has  written. 

The  authorized  edition  of  his  lifework,  the 
publication  of  which  has  just  begun  (i  881)  in  a 
form  seldom  employed  by  writers  during  their 
lifetime,  will  include  everything  which  he  has 
published  —  everything,  without  exception. 

When  he  came  to  prepare  it,  there  was  nothing 
for  him  to  prune  away;  everything  was  consid- 
ered good  enough  to  be  included.  In  this  epoch 
of  hasty  productions,  improvised  under  the  spur 
of  necessity,  how  many  are  there  among  us  whose 
works  could  undergo  such  a  trial  as  that  ? 

How  many  are  there,  and  I  am  speaking  now  of 
the  most  illustrious  among  those  whose  talent  has 
crowned  their  vogue  and  consecrated  their  success, 
who  in  their  early  life  have  not  written  books 
which  were  too  quickly  conceived  and  too  rapidly 
finished  —  books  they  would  like  to  have  effaced 
from  the  list  of  their  published  works? 

How  many  are  there  who  are  not  bent  upon 
dating  their  works  from  a  relatively  recent  period, 
prior  to  which  they  wrote  volumes  which  they 
would  not  dare  to  avow  any  longer  and  which  they 
would  absolutely  refuse  to  reprint  to-day.-'  Few 
are  they  who,  helped  by  a  lucky  fortune,  or  far- 
sighted  enough  at  the  very  threshold  of  their 
career,  have  been  able  to  guard  themselves  from 
these  dangers.     Alphonse  Daudet  is  one  of  them. 

But  that  is  not  the  only  example  of  the  lucky 
chance  which  mounted  guard  about  his  literary 
cradle.     He  did  not  have  any  "high-water  book" 


My  Brother  and  I.  379 

—  that  is  to  say,  any  book  by  means  of  which,  with 
a  reference  to  its  great  success,  critics  are  able  to 
crush  the  volumes  which  the  same  author  pub- 
lishes later. 

In  their  character  as  novelists  the  Goncourts, 
who  are  so  important  because  of  their  historical 
work,  have  always  remained  the  authors  of  Ger- 
minie  Lacerteux ;  many  as  have  been  the  charming 
novels  which  have  come  from  their  bold  and  inno- 
vating pens,  none  have  equalled  the  memory  of 
that  one,  which  is  forever  recalled  when  their 
name  is  thought  of  and  their  character  described. 

Let  ;fimile  Zola  write  as  many  masterpieces  as 
he  chooses,  people  will  always  bring  forward 
U Assommoir,  the  book  which  made  his  reputa- 
tion, defined  his  manner  and  exhausted  his  lit- 
erary procedures  —  after  the  production  of  which 
he  could  not  astonish  the  world  any  more ! 

Gustave  Flaubert  is  dead,  crushed  in  a  literary 
sense  beneath  the  weight  of  the  very  proper 
success  of  Madame  Bovary.  Indeed  that  itself 
was  the  great  sorrow  of  the  end  of  his  life.  It 
reached  such  a  pitch  with  him  that  he  became 
irritated  when  one  spoke  to  him  concerning  the 
resounding  success  of  that  novel.  When  Ernest 
Renan  wrote  to  him  a  long  and  eloquent  letter 
after  the  publication  of  La  Tentation  de  Saint 
Antoine,  authorizing  him  to  publish  it  in  the 
newspapers,  Flaubert  neglected  to  give  it  pub- 
licity for  the  sole  reason  that  the  letter  ended 
with  the  wish  to  have  him  return  to  the  methods 
and   manner  of   writing  which  had  brought  him 


380  Alphonse  Daudet. 

glory.  And  when  Renan  was  astounded  at  such 
touchiness : 

"My  dear  fellow,"  responded  Flaubert,  "I  dis- 
like poor  jokes  very  much ;  and  I  have  had  rather 
too  much  of  that  kind  of  joke !  Always  and  always 
Madame  Bovary!  " 

"That  sort  of  a  joke,"  as  poor  Flaubert  said, 
"has  never  been  made  and  never  will  be  made" 
on  Alphonse  Daudet.  All  the  chapters  he  has 
written  have  obtained,  pretty  equally,  the  favor  of 
the  public.  Those  who  contested  his  power  in 
fecundity,  while  doing  homage  to  his  talent,  when 
he  had  only  published  his  Lettres  de  Mon  Moulin 
or  the  Contes  du  Limdi,  place  at  present  in  the 
same  rank,  whatever  their  preferences  may  be, 
Le  Petit  Chose,  Tartarin  de  Tarascon,  Fromont 
Jeime  et  Risler  Ahi^,  Jack,  Le  Nabab,  Les  Rois  en 
Exit  and  Niima  Roumestan.  They  do  not  dream 
of  using  one  of  these  books,  so  varied  in  their 
inspiration,  to  depreciate  the  other.  For  each 
one  in  succession  reveals  a  new  effort  and  a  con- 
stant progress  in  the  author. 

This  literary  conscience,  so  powerful  and  severe 
toward  itself,  was  aroused  in  my  brother  along 
with  the  growth  of  his  talent.  It  affords  a  clew 
to  his  processes,  his  stern  determination  to  render 
perfect  the  expression  of  his  thought  and  his 
hourly  battles  with  words,  w^hich  he  grinds  and 
kneads  and  renders  subtle  in  accordance  with  the 
flow  of  his  imagination. 

"Style  is  the  fragrance  of  literary  work,"  cried 
he  one  day;  and  in  fact  every  one  of  his  books 


My  Brother  and  I.  381 

represents  an  almost  superhuman  labor.  There  is 
many  an  easy-flowing,  harmonious  page,  over 
which  the  sentences  march  with  majesty,  like 
some  river  that  rolls  across  its  bed  fine  scales  of 
gold;  but  on  that  page  there  remains  not  one 
trace  of  the  effort  which  it  cost  him ;  and  yet  that 
admirably  gifted  artist,  who  was  never  satisfied 
with  his  own  work,  has  perspired  and  suffered 
and  turned  pale  over  it,  to  the  point  of  feeling 
broken  in  health  for  several  days  through  the 
mere  excess  of  labor. 

Let  us  therefore  not  be  astonished  that  he  has 
conquered  fortune  and  glory.  Glory  and  fortune 
represent  the  well-earned  reward  of  a  tremendous 
worker  who,  at  the  very  beginning,  had  the  cour- 
age to  reject  gains  easy  to  obtain  and  never 
sacrificed  anything  to  improvisation,  even  when, 
being  still  a  boy,  he  was  struggling  with  the  mate- 
rial difficulties  of  life;  as  a  man  at  forty  years  of 
age  he  can  flatter  himself  to  have  made  the  culti- 
vation of  letters  the  hisrhest  aim  of  his  life. 


382,  Alp  house  Daudet, 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

Thus  it  was  that  the  inborn  love  for  letters  broke 
the  clouds  upon  our  gloomy  horizon;  it  opened 
up  a  luminous  point  and  gilded  the  threshold  of 
our  youth,  taking  the  place  of  all  those  pleasures 
of  which  we  were  deprived.  But  it  was  none  too 
much  to  outbalance  the  anguish  of  mind  which 
befell  us  as  soon  as  our  family  affairs  were  borne 
in  upon  us  again. 

Things  went  from  bad  to  worse  every  day  in 
that  respect.  During  the  course  of  1856  our 
father  had  to  abandon  entirely  the  enterprises 
which  he  had  begun.  After  seven  years  of  cease- 
less labor  there  was  no  result  except  a  deficit 
which  was  simply  crushing  us.  Strangled  by 
debts,  he  had  turned  every  way  to  find  some  re- 
source. After  having  struggled  desperately 
against  ill  luck  Vincent  Daudet  was  at  the  end 
of  his  rope.  Poverty  benumbed  him.  There  was 
a  moment  when  he  had  hoped  to  find  some  lender 
of  capital  who  would  aid  him  to  carry  on  his  busi- 
ness ;  but  his  search  was  in  vain  and  he  gave 
it  up. 

One  morning  he  sold  in  a  single  parcel  all 
the  merchandise  which  remained  in  the  shop, 
balanced  his  accounts  and  demanded  and  obtained 


My  Brother  mid  I.  383 

from  his  creditors  extension  of  time.  Then  he 
entered  as  partner  a  wine  business,  where  he 
would  have  gained  the  bread  necessary  to  his 
family  and  a  good  deal  more,  if  he  had  known 
how  to  bend  to  the  demands  of  his  new  situation. 
But  a  long  habit  of  commanding  others  made  the 
place  very  soon  intolerable  to  him.  Resignation 
also  was  not  long  in  reaching  its  limits;  then  he 
left  Lyon  for  Paris,  where  his  friends  had  caused 
him  to  hope  for  a  position  in  closer  conformity  to 
his  taste. 

From  that  moment  until  the  day  when  Fate 
permitted  his  sons  to  grant  him  the  repose  which 
he  had  so  cruelly  and  laboriously  earned,  our  poor 
father  was  like  a  swallow  fluttering  about  within 
bounds  that  impede  its  flight  and  weary  its  wings 
and  eyes  —  a  bird  striking  against  those  walls 
beyond  which  it  knows  the  wide  atmosphere  and 
open  space  exist,  and  ending  by  falling  and  dying, 
worn  out  by  its  despairing  efforts.  He  tried  ten 
different  businesses  and  looked  for  employment 
in  commerce  and  in  government  offices.  One 
moment  he  thought  he  had  fortune  in  his  grasp 
with  a  certain  discovery  in  industrial  matters 
which  has  enriched  others  since.  Then  his  hopes 
vanished  and  his  strength  was  used  up  by  the 
weight  of  his  disasters.  Discouragement  took 
hold  of  him  and  he  was  forced  to  throw  upon  our 
shoulders  the  care  of  rebuilding  his  ruined  hearth. 
He  has  enjoyed  the  happiness  of  seeing  it  rebuilt. 
Notwithstanding  the  long  malady  which  finally 
took   him    from    us,    his    last    years    have   been 


384  Alphonse  Daudet. 

serene,  peaceful  and  beautified  by  the  happiness 
of  his  children,  which  became  his  own  personal 
happiness. 

When  he  had  decided  to  quit  his  trade  we  left 
the  mournful  house  in  Pas-I^troit  Street  and  set- 
tled down  in  a  modest  entresol  on  the  Rue  de 
Castries  in  the  middle  of  a  wind-swept  and  smil- 
ing quarter  between  Bellecour  Place  and  Perrache 
Allee.  At  that  time  Alphonse  and  I  were  in  the 
liveliest  effervescence  of  a  literary  life  and  most 
delighted  to  begin  to  give  free  vent  to  our  aims 
and  aspirations.  It  seemed  to  us  that  we  had 
recovered  some  independence  in  this  new  apart- 
ment, away  from  the  neighborhood  of  the  shop 
with  its  bales  of  silk  and  piles  of  scarfs  and 
everything  else  that  recalled  the  causes  of  our 
ruin  to  us.  My  brother  finished  up  his  studies 
by  one  vigorous  effort ;  and,  for  my  part,  I  under- 
took to  complete  mine  by  giving  to  my  education 
all  the  leisure  that  my  office  work  allowed  me. 

Both  of  us  worked  pretty  solidly  at  that  time, 
happy  as  we  were  in  our  voluntary  labor,  so  that, 
notwithstanding  the  wretched  ending  of  our  stay 
in  Lyon,  this  epoch  of  our  lives  seems  less  sor- 
rowful when  we  look  at  it  through  the  memories 
that  remain  about  the  Rue  de  Castries. 

Still,  it  was  there  we  learned  of  the  death  of  our 
elder  brother  Henri. 

I  said  before  that  he  wanted  to  enter  into 
orders  and  had  begun  his  ecclesiastical  studies  at 
the  seminary  at  Allix.  He  did  not  stay  there 
long.     When  he  reached  the  sub-deaconship,  just 


My  Brother  and  I.  385 

before  pronouncing  the  final  vows,  his  soul,  ill 
and  troubled  by  the  excess  of  a  devotion  pushed 
beyond  measure,  had  conceived  scruples  and 
doubts  concerning  the  sincerity  he  was  bringing 
to  his  vocation.  So  he  had  returned  to  us,  to  the 
great  disgust  of  my  father,  who  could  not  under- 
stand at  all  what  such  hesitations  meant. 

For  several  months  he  had  lived  near  us,  try- 
ing to  teach  piano  lessons  and,  in  consequence 
of  some  chance,  playing  the  organ  in  one  of  the 
parishes  of  the  city.  Then,  weary  of  a  life  that 
had  no  aim,  he  left  for  Nimes,  where  the  Abb6 
d'Alzon  offered  him  a  position  on  the  staff  of  in- 
structors at  Assumption  College.  I  have  kept 
most  of  the  letters  which  our  poor  Henri  wrote  to 
us  at  that  time.  They  are  full  of  tender  counsels 
for  Alphonse  and  me,  but  they  reveal  the  greatest 
lack  of  experience  of  the  world  and  show  a  way 
of  seeing  life  through  the  veils  of  a  somewhat 
narrow  mysticism  which  fitted  ill  those  inexorable 
demands  upon  us  which  we  were  about  to  experi- 
ence in  the  near  future. 

But  they  revealed  at  the  same  time  a  soul  full 
of  endless  kindness  and  thoroughly  penetrated 
by  the  ideal.  I  have  always  thought  that  if  my 
elder  brother  had  lived,  his  spirit,  whilst  it  grew 
more  manly,  would  have  shaken  off  the  prejudices 
and  doubts  which  weakened  it,  and  that,  having 
cast  aside  the  hankering  after  the  priesthood,  his 
actual  talents  as  a  musician  and  pianist,  while 
developing  themselves,  would  have  helped  him  to 
find  the  true  path  of  his  career,  that  of  art. 

25 


386,  Alphonse  Daudet 

One  day  a  letter  from  Assumption  College  sud- 
denly announced  to  us  that  he  had  been  attacked 
by  brain  fever.  My  mother  left  at  once,  but  she 
reached  Nimes  too  late  to  find  her  son  alive.  Her 
only  and  supreme  consolation  consisted  in  the 
privilege  of  pressing  her  lips  to  the  forehead  of 
that  young  Levite,  transfigured  by  death  and 
lying  white  and  fair  upon  a  pillow  in  its  flood  of 
black  hair.  She  had  already  suffered  so  much 
that  this  catastrophe  found  no  place  on  her  heart 
for  a  new  scar.  Those  wounds  which  had  been 
open  and  bleeding  this  long  time  only  grew  a 
little  deeper,  and  that  was  all.     Mater  dolorosa! 

The  news  of  this  disaster  arrived  in  a  despatch 
which  my  father  and  Alphonse  received  one  even- 
ing just  at  nightfall,  and  which  I  read  a  few 
minutes  later  as  I  returned  from  my  office.  We 
wept  together  till  a  late  hour  of  the  night;  then 
our  mother  returned  and  life  took  us  up  again,  a 
little  more  sorrowful  and  wounded  in  soul  than 
before. 

Our  solitary  amusement  at  that  time  consisted 
in  going  on  fine  days  to  listen  to  the  music  in 
Bellecour  Square.  There  we  met  Mayery,  Beur- 
theret  and  Ludovic  Penin.  We  walked  about 
together,  talking  oftenest  of  literature  and  art, 
already  grave  and  attentive  little  men  and  filled 
with  a  feeling  of  pride  in  the  precocious  bril- 
liancy we  showed  as  men  of  letters  —  a  brilliancy 
which  did  not  fail  to  flatter  our  vanity  somewhat. 
Since  writing  Lio  et  Chritiejine  Flctiry  Alphonse 
was  a  person  of  consideration  in  those  surround- 


My  Brother  and  I.  2>^'j 

ings.  When  he  left  us  to  go  back  to  the  comrades 
of  his  own  age,  they  talked  of  his  verses  and  his 
talent;  brilliant  hopes  were  attached  to  his  future 
and  for  a  moment  our  parents  felt  their  miseries 
assuaged  when  I  repeated  to  them  what  our  friends 
had  said  of  their  young  son. 

While  speaking  of  Lyon  and  Bellecour  Square 
it  is  impossible  for  me  to  refrain  from  saying 
something  about  Marshal  de  Castellane,  who  was 
one  of  the  most  vivid  impressions  of  our  youth. 
It  was  at  the  "music  hour  "  that  he  showed  him- 
self to  the  people  of  Lyon.  A  thousand  anec- 
dotes of  his  present  and  past  existence  passed 
from  mouth  to  mouth  and  let  loose  about  him  an 
amount  of  curiosity  which  reached  the  point  of 
mania.  He  was  one  of  the  grand  attractions  of 
our  walk.  All  of  a  sudden  we  heard  the  drums 
beating  to  quarters;  the  detail  of  soldiers  on  the 
square  shouldered  arms,  whilst  the  marshal  on 
horseback  came  down  the  street  and  turned  the 
corner  of  Bourbon  Street,  always  in  full  uniform, 
wearing  in  brave  show  his  military  chapeau  wav- 
ing with  white  feathers.  After  having  saluted 
the  guard,  he  mingled  among  the  people,  walk- 
ing to  and  fro,  a  single  eyeglass  stuck  in  his  eye. 
He  had  most  singular  and  eccentric  sides  to  his 
character.  But  what  an  admirable  soldier  he  was, 
and  what  a  splendid  military  life  was  his! 

My  brother  left  college  in  August  of  that  year 
and  had  nothing  further  to  do  than  to  present 
himself  for  examination  in  order  to  obtain  his 
baccalaureate.      Unfortunately   a    difficulty   only 


388  Alphonse  Daudet, 

too  well  foreseen  was  about  to  rise  in  this  direc- 
tion and  the  impossibility  of  solving  it  was  about 
to  determine  our  parents  to  take  a  very  great 
resolution  in  a  matter  which  touched  my  poor 
Alphonse  profoundly. 

At  that  time  the  course  for  examination  for  the 
bachelor's  degree  amounted  to  a  relatively  impor- 
tant sum.  However  manfully  my  father  might 
bleed  himself,  he  could  never  succeed  in  procur- 
ing it  and  still  less  in  abstracting  it  from  his 
household  expenses,  which  were  rigorously  lim- 
ited to  the  most  pressing  needs  of  our  family  life. 
It  is  true  that  his  son  was  quite  young  enough  to 
wait  and  defer  his  examination  for  a  year.  But 
in  the  meantime  what  should  he  do  with  himself.-' 

This  being  the  condition  of  things,  a  singular 
proposition  reached  us  from  the  South.  One  of 
our  relatives  advised  my  father  to  beg  the  admis- 
sion of  Alphonse  to  the  college  at  Alais  as  a 
teacher;  he  had  ascertained  that  the  gates  of  that 
college  would  open  wide  in  welcome  before  the 
grandnephew  of  Abbe  Reynaud  and  that  his 
youth  would  not  bean  obstacle.  The  child  —  for 
he  was  still  a  child  —  might  prepare  himself 
there  for  his  examinations,  live  a  whole  year  with- 
out any  cost  to  his  family  and  even  put  some 
money  aside,  no  matter  how  small  his  salary 
might  be. 

At  any  other  time  my  father  and  mother  would 
have  resolutely  rejected  this  proposition,  being 
quite  upset  at  the  thought  of  separating  them- 
selves  from   their   youngest  son   and   delivering 


My  Brother  and  I.  389 

him  up  to  the  harsh  experiences  of  a  humble  and 
almost  disdained  profession;  but  in  the  situation 
where  we  then  were  our  future  preoccupied  them 
less  than  the  immediate  necessities  of  our  life 
from  day  to  day. 

After  all,  it  was  as  good  an  entrance  as  another 
into  the  profession  of  teacher!  The  sweetest 
memories  of  the  youth  of  my  mother  were  attached 
to  that  college  at  Alais.  In  memory  she  saw  it 
again,  always  just  as  she  had  seen  it  long  ago, 
when  the  intelligent  and  paternal  management  of 
"our  uncle  the  Abb6"  kept  it  flourishing  and 
made  a  delightful  spot  of  it  in  which  to  live. 

These  considerations,  joined  to  actual  neces- 
sity, swayed  the  lot  of  my  brother  and  his  de- 
parture was  decided  upon.  He  accepted  his  new 
destiny  courageously,  happy  to  be  able  to  assist 
his  family  and  enchanted  first  and  foremost  at 
his  maiden  voyage  into  an  unknown  land,  the 
adventures  of  which  he  was  very  far  from  sus- 
pecting. 

As  for  me,  although  I  understood  the  wisdom 
of  it,  this  resolution  confounded  me.  The  idea 
of  separating  myself  from  my  brother  broke  my 
heart.  I  considered  how  young  he  was,  how  poor 
in  experience  and  how  badly  armed  for  the  trials 
which  he  was  about  to  undergo ! 

Sixteen  years  of  age,  with  a  tender  soul  and  a 
sensitive  imagination,  having  all  the  weakness  of 
his  youth  and  a  signal  awkwardness  when  con- 
fronted by  material  difficulties,  added  to  a  dis- 
tressing shortness  of   sight  —  how  could  he  put 


390  Alphonse  Daudet. 

such  a  matter  through?  But,  alas,  my  own 
powerlessness  was  equal  to  my  sorrow !  it  was 
absolutely  necessary  to  be  resigned. 

"In  this  family  the  members  had  begun  to  get 
used  to  misfortune.  The  day  following  that 
memorable  affair,  the  entire  family  accompanied 
le  Petit  Chose  to  the  boat.  .  .  .  All  of  a  sudden 
the  bell  rang  —  it  was  necessary  to  part  —  le  Petit 
Chose,  tearing  himself  from  the  embraces  of  his 
friends,  stepped  bravely  across  the  landing-plank. 

*"  Be  a  good  boy ! '  cried  his  father  to  him. 

"'Don't  get  sick,'  said  Madame  Eyssette. 

"Jacques  wanted  to  speak,  but  he  could  not; 
he  was  crying  too  hard." 

Yes,  indeed,  Jacques  was  crying;  but  they  were 
not  the  snivelling  tears  of  childhood,  they  were 
the  fertile  weeping  of  his  precocious  manhood, 
dragged  from  his  eyes  by  the  acute  sorrow  of  that 
separation,  which  was  the  bitterest  sorrow  he  had 
yet  been  called  upon  to  suffer.  He  saw  the  future 
through  his  tears.  And  the  more  sorrowful  the 
present  hour  was,  the  more  he  clung  to  that  future 
with  confidence,  forming  beneath  the  very  blows 
of  defeat  new  projects  with  a  view  to  revenge  for 
present  ills,  with  which  that  comrade  was  closely 
associated  whom  the  swift  flood  of  the  Rhone 
was  carrying  far  away. 

"  Le  Petit  Chose  did  not  cry,  not  he.  As  I 
have  already  had  the  honor  to  inform  you,  he  was 
a  grand  philosopher,  and,  really,  it  will  not  do 
for  philosophers  to  yield  to  weakness.  .  .  .  And 
nevertheless,    God    knows   how   he    loved   them, 


My  Brother  and  I.  391 

those  dear  people  whom  he  left  behind  him  in 
the  fog !  God  knows  whether  he  would  not  have 
gladly  given  for  their  sake  his  entire  blood  and 
flesh !  But  what  would  you  ?  The  joy  of  leaving 
Lyon,  the  movement  of  the  boat,  the  intoxica- 
tion of  making  a  voyage,  the  pride  of  feeling  that 
he  was  a  man  —  a  free  and  complete  man,  jour- 
neying alone  and  gaining  his  own  livelihood  — 
all  that  intoxicated  le  Petit  Chose  and  prevented 
him  from  dreaming,  as  he  ought  to  have  done, 
about  the  three  darling  persons  who  were  sobbing 
back  there,  standing  on  the  quays  of  the  Rh6ne." 


392  Alphonse  Daudet. 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

My  brother's  departure  made  us  a  little  more 
sorrowful.  Several  months  elapsed  without 
bringing  us  anything  else  save  successive  aggre- 
gations of  our  misfortunes,  which  were  so  many 
witnesses  to  the  severity  with  which  bad  luck 
hounded  us.  The  clouds  which  had  been  heaping 
up  so  long  upon  our  horizon  grew  darker  day  by 
day  and  a  catastrophe  grew  imminent.  I  felt  it 
approaching  and  prepared  for  it. 

After  all,  in  the  wretched  situation  where  we 
found  ourselves,  would  it  not  be  better  that  Fate 
should  exhaust  its  furies  on  us  in  a  final  storm  ? 
When  it  had  finally  beaten  us  down  and  had  dis- 
persed the  very  fragments  of  our  hearth,  it  would 
doubtless  move  elsewhere  to  strike  its  blows  and 
give  us  a  free  moment  to  build  up  that  which  it 
had  destroyed. 

Besides,  a  supreme  disaster  would  take  us  out 
of  the  harassing  uncertainties  among  which  we 
were  battling.  Then  it  would  be  necessary  to 
make  a  resolution ;  I  could  go  to  Paris  —  that 
unknown  Paris,  where  so  many  others  before  us 
had  arrived  obscure,  unhappy  and  disinherited  and 
found  there  the  end  of   their   misery.     Decided 


My  Brother  and  I.  393 

to  imitate  them,  I  often  talked  to  my  mother  of 
my  plan,  but  she  feared  for  me,  having  lost  the 
very  power  to  conceive  of  hope.  What  would  I 
do  if  I  went  to  Paris?  It  would  have  been  some- 
thing if  I  had  even  had  some  certain  employment ! 

"I  will  get  a  position  in  the  telegraph  offices," 
said  I  to  her  one  day,  recollecting  that  we  had 
an  old  friend  of  the  family  in  the  administration 
of  that  government  department. 

On  hearing  this  she  regarded  my  project  with 
greater  tranquillity  and  talked  to  my  father  about 
it  during  one  of  his  infrequent  stops  at  Lyon,  for 
he  was  then  much  away, 

"  There  is  nothing  to  do  but  to  let  him  follow 
freely  his  own  inspiration,"  answered  he. 

From  that  moment  I  dreamed  of  nothing  but 
the  trip  and  especially  of  the  means  to  effect  it, 
for  it  was  exactly  the  most  wretched  part  of  our 
condition  that  any  project,  however  advantageous 
it  might  be,  could  not  be  carried  out  if  any  ad- 
vance of  money,  even  a  small  one,  were  necessary. 
Fortunately,  and  it  is  with  intention  that  I  employ 
that  word,  a  catastrophe  did  arrive,  which  allowed 
me  to  realize  the  idea  which  I  had  been  caressing 
with  such  perseverance. 

During  the  whole  year  we  had  been  inhabiting 
the  apartment  in  the  Rue  de  Castries  the  land- 
lord had  not  known,  as  the  vulgar  saying  runs,  the 
color  of  our  money.  He  had  begun  by  showing 
a  great  deal  of  patience.  What  he  knew  about 
us  had  interested  him  in  our  fortune;  and  when, 
again  and  again,  the  bills  for  rent  presented  by 


394  Alphonse  Daudet. 

the  janitor  had  come  back  to  him  unpaid,  he  had 
contented  himself  with  sending  a  courteous  de- 
mand to  my  father. 

But  that  patience  could  not  last  always.  Now 
we  owed  him  for  three  quarters  and  the  bill  for 
the  fourth  was  approaching.  At  his  own  request 
his  business  agent  came  to  demand  payment.  He 
clothed  this  demand  in  the  most  polite  forms ;  but 
one  felt  the  hand  of  iron  beneath  the  glove  and 
under  the  smooth  words  of  the  man  of  the  world 
the  insistence  of  the  creditor.  He  had  been 
glad  to  accord  delays  to  us  because  we  were 
honest  people  and  especially  because  he  believed 
that  our  lack  of  funds  was  merely  temporary.  But 
he  could  not  wait  any  longer  for  the  payment  of 
the  debt  already  contracted,  nor  allow  us  to  re- 
main longer  in  the  apartment  if  our  inability  to 
pay  the  rent  should  continue.  This  notification 
to  quit  left  us  without  any  resource.  In  the 
absence  of  my  father  I  counselled  with  my  mother 
how  we  might  be  able  to  face  the  trouble  and 
we  came  to  an  agreement  and  recognized  that  it 
could  only  be  done  through  the  sale  of  our  furni- 
ture. The  furniture  sold  and  the  most  pressing 
debts  paid,  my  mother  could  leave  with  her 
daughter  for  the  South,  where  one  of  her  sisters 
offered  her  a  roof,  whilst  I  could  go  to  seek  my 
fortune  in  Paris  and  hasten  our  reunion. 

I  had  so  lively  a  faith  in  my  own  star  and  in 
that  of  my  brother,  I  uttered  my  hopes  in  such  a 
tone  of  conviction  that  the  dear  good  woman  was 
not  able  to  prevent   herself   from   sharing  them 


My  Brother  and  I.  395 

and  thus  received  a  certain  relief  from  the  bitter- 
ness of  those  cruel  hours. 

Hardly  conceived  and  approved  by  my  father, 
to  whom  a  long  letter  set  forth  the  whole  matter, 
when  this  heroic  plan  was  put  into  execution. 
I  notified  Descours  of  my  near  departure  and 
bravely  announced  to  him  that  I  was  going  to  "  do 
literature  "  in  Paris. 

"  I  always  thought  that  you  would  end  in  that 
way,"  answered  the  good-natured  man.  "Good 
luck  to  you." 

Then  I  went  to  see  the  agent  for  our  apartment 
house.  I  imparted  to  him  our  resolution  and 
begged  him  to  spare  us  the  judicial  proceedings 
and  permit  the  sale  of  our  furniture  in  a  kindly 
spirit.  He  entered  into  my  views  of  the  case  and 
together  we  made  an  inventory  of  the  objects  that 
filled  our  apartment.  He  permitted  me  to  set 
aside  a  certain  number,  the  sale  of  which  would 
have  broken  poor  mamma's  heart ;  she  was  already 
on  her  way  to  the  South.  I  took  three  days  to 
pack  them  up,  in  order  to  send  them  after  her 
and  did  this  business  with  joy  in  my  heart  and  a 
song  upon  my  lips,  convinced  that  this  unhappy 
hour  would  only  bring  us  together  again  in  luckier 
days. 

Thus  was  the  dispersion  of  the  ruins  of  our 
hearth  accomplished.  This  time  it  was  all  up 
with  the  family  centre.  There  was  nothing  for 
it  save  to  build  it  up  again  somewhere  else.  On 
the  evening  of  that  day  the  bills  were  all  settled; 
and  when  the  part  for  the  creditors  and  that  for 


39^  Alphonse  Daudet. 

my  mother  had  been  set  aside,  there  remained  for 
me  only  a  few  louis-d'or ;  these  at  least  owed  noth- 
ing to  anybody  and  permitted  me  to  reach  Paris 
eight  days  afterward  with  fifty  francs  in  my 
pocket. 

During  the  last  week  of  my  stay  in  Lyon  I 
lived  with  Paul  Beurtheret,  who  had  in  the  most: 
paternal  way  offered  me  half  his  room. 

That  week  was  consecrated  to  the  preparations 
for  departure.  I  had  been  often  told  that  in 
order  to  succeed  in  Paris  it  was  necessary  to 
show  one's  self  well  clad  and  exhibit  no  trace  of 
wretchedness  whatever.  "  Make  yourself  envied, " 
Beurtheret  kept  repeating;  "never  allow  yourself 
to  be  pitied ! "  Filled  with  such  counsels,  I  had 
ordered  an  entire  wardrobe  of  clothes  from  my 
tailor,  because,  notwithstanding  my  lack  of  money, 
I  did  have  a  tailor;  not  a  poor  devil  of  a  janitor 
who  stitches  new  cloth  on  old,  but  an  elegant 
tailor,  high-priced  and  of  great  repute  with  the 
fashionables  of  Lyon,  who  had  opened  a  credit 
for  me  on  my  general  good  appearance,  promising 
to  continue  it  to  my  brother  and  me  just  as  long 
as  we  should  find  it  necessary. 

Such  a  speculation  had  its  dangers;  for  if  we 
had  died  meantime,  I  hardly  know  by  whom  and 
how  that  good  fellow  would  ever  have  been  paid. 
Nevertheless  he  had  cause  to  congratulate  him- 
self for  having  believed  in  us.  When  we  were  in 
condition  to  pay  his  bills,  one  may  readily  imag- 
ine that  there  was  no  question  of  demanding  the 
least   rebate.     Thanks   to   his   belief   in   us,   we 


My  Brother  and  I.  397 

were  able,  when  we  had  scarce  arrived  in  Paris 
without  a  penny  or  parcel,  to  present  ourselves 
in  certain  drawing-rooms  where  the  reputation  of 
Alphonse  Daudet  began  and  where  I  myself  made 
many  precious  friendships. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  pay  too  dearly  for  such 
genuine  services.  But  is  it  not  a  very  modern 
feature  in  manners  and  customs  that  such  a  bold 
clothier  should  play  at  dice  for  a  big  pile  against 
the  future  of  two  little  unknown  fellows,  both  of 
them  under  age,  who  had  no  heritage  whatever  to 
expect  and  were  as  obscure  as  we  were  at  that 
time  ? 

And  now  that  the  painful  sojourn  in  Lyon  is 
done  with,  we  shall  talk  of  it  no  more,  if  so  it 
please  you.  Sorrows  and  humiliations,  decep- 
tions and  tears  remain  down  there,  sunk  within 
the  fogs  of  the  Rhone,  between  those  high  dwell- 
ings which  make  such  narrow  streets,  deep  as  the 
bottom  of  ditches.  From  that  time  forth  our  sky 
continues  to  brighten  with  a  vivid  gleam  of  hope, 
our  paths  go  on  enlarging  before  us  and  our 
prolonged  efforts  begin  to  bear  their  first  fruit. 


398  Alphonse  DaudeL 


CHAPTER   XV. 

After  a  fatiguing  journey  in  a  third-class  com- 
partment I  reached  Paris  at  five  oclock  in  the 
morning,  the  first  of  September,  1857.  Having 
taken  a  room  in  a  horrible  little  hotel  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  Exchange,  I  was  marching 
along  the  Boulevard  as  early  as  eight  o'clock  in 
the  morning  in  evening  dress,  white  cravat  and 
varnished  shoes,  as  trig  as  any  young  bridegroom 
on  the  morning  of  his  wedding.  I  breakfasted  at 
Tortoni's.  A  perusal  of  the  bill  brought  me  back 
to  less  lofty  ideas  and  I  likewise  observed  that 
nobody  except  myself  wore  evening  dress  at  that 
early  hour  in  the  morning ;  the  very  next  day  I 
profited  by  that  double  lesson  of  my  first  day  in 
Paris.  I  owed  a  visit  to  Claudius  Hebrard ;  he 
had  an  elegant  bachelor's  apartment  in  the  Rue  de 
Tournon.  It  just  happened  that  he  was  leaving 
that  very  night  for  Lyon,  where  he  intended  to 
stay  a  whole  month.  After  having  taken  me 
about  Paris,  he  offered  to  install  me  in  his 
apartment  until  his  return,  so  that,  thanks  to 
him,  during  his  entire  absence  I  dwelt  most  com- 
fortably established,  like  the  young  son  of  a  well- 
to-do  family. 


My  Brother  and  I.  399 

I  had  brought  two  letters  of  recommendation 
with  me  —  one  from  Paul  Beurtheret  for  his  pro- 
vincial comrade  Armand  Barthet,  author  of  Le 
Moineart  de  Lesbie,  the  other  from  Leopold  de 
Gaillard  for  Armand  de  Pontmartin,  whose  books 
I  had  presented  in  a  criticism  to  the  readers  of  the 
Gazette  de  Lyon. 

Barthet  received  me  like  an  old  friend  and 
begged  me  to  come  to  see  him  often,  authorizing 
me  to  profit  by  his  right  of  entry  into  the  Odeon 
theatre,  whither  he  never  went.  I  really  owe  this 
confession  to  M.  de  la  Rounat,  who  was  then, 
as  he  is  to-day,  the  director  of  that  theatre.  For 
an  entire  winter  I  went  to  the  plays  there  given 
by  negligently  throwing  down  before  the  wicket- 
keepers  the  name  of  an  author  whose  work  the 
great  Rachel  had  played  in  her  time  at  the  Theatre 
Frangais.  Most  extraordinary  was  the  fact  that 
my  extreme  youth  did  not  in  any  way  astonish 
the  gentlemen  who  kept  the  wickets,  and  that 
later,  about  two  years  afterwards,  when  I  obtained 
the  right  of  entry  for  myself,  they  were  not 
astonished  at  all  to  see  me  become  Ernest  Daudet, 
after  having  been  for  so  long  a  time  Armand 
Barthet. 

Having  read  the  letter  from  Leopold  de  Gail- 
lard, the  Comte  de  Pontmartin  passed  his  arm 
under  mine  and  conducted  me  round  into  Berg^re 
Street  to  the  newspaper  office  of  Le  Spectateur, 
an  Orleanist  sheet  which  had  taken  the  place  of 
L' Assemble  Nationale,  which  had  been  suppressed 
a  little  while  before.    Being  presented  to  Mallac, 


4QO  Alphonse  Daudet, 

the  brilliant  director  of  the  Spectateur,  I  thought 
I  was  in  a  dream  when  he  informed  me  that  at  the 
request  of  Pontmartin  he  engaged  me  among  his 
editors  with  fixed  emoluments  of  200  francs  a 
month.  Two  hundred  francs !  That  meant  my 
livelihood  assured;  that  meant  the  certainty  of 
being  able  to  assist  our  mother;  that  also  meant 
the  possibility  of  calling  Alphonse  to  Paris! 

And  all  this  had  already  happened  the  second 
day  of  my  arrival !  Had  I  not  good  reason  to 
believe  in  our  lucky  star?  I  took  possession  of 
my  employment  a  few  weeks  later.  I  was  put  to 
general  city  reports  on  the  paper.  My  task  was 
easy  enough  and  gave  me  hours  of  leisure  which 
I  consecrated  entirely  to  study.  And  I  had  so 
much  to  learn ! 

At  the  end  of  the  month  the  return  of  Claudius 
H6brard  obliged  me  to  look  for  a  lodging.  There 
happened  to  be  a  furnished  house  in  that  very 
Rue  de  Tournon,  a  great  barrack  of  students, 
entitled  pompously  the  "Grand  Hotel  du  S6nat." 
There  I  hired  a  miserable  little  chamber  in  the 
roof  on  the  fifth  story  —  fifteen  francs  a  month ; 
that  price  has  its  own  eloquence  !  —  an  iron  truckle 
bed,  a  wretched  bureau,  which  served  also  as 
toilet-table,  a  desk,  two  chairs,  a  broken  stove  of 
pottery,  a  bit  of  carpet  on  the  red  tiles  —  such 
was  my  interior.  Through  my  single  window  I 
could  see  nothing  but  roofs,  chimneys  and  dormer 
windows,  and,  raising  their  tiresome  architecture 
above  my  narrow  horizon,  the  round  towers  of 
the  church  of  Saint-Sulpice. 


My  Brother  and  I.  401 

On  a  sombre  October  evening,  when  I  found 
myself  alone  for  the  first  time  in  that  poverty- 
stricken  lodging,  after  quitting  the  luxurious 
apartment  of  Claudius  Hebrard,  the  transition  was 
so  cruel  and  the  feeling  of  my  wretchedness  so 
profound,  that  my  youthful  courage,  weakened  by 
loneliness,  the  tension  on  my  nerves  and  excess 
of  labor,  was  seized  with  fear.  My  father  without 
an  occupation;  my  mother  so  far  away  and  living 
in  a  house  which  was  not  hers,  and  my  brother 
very  wretched  in  his  college !  these  were  just  so 
many  sorrowful  visions  rudely  brought  to  bear 
upon  my  mind  by  the  forbidding  look  of  the  walls 
of  my  chamber,  on  which  the  paper,  meant  to  con- 
ceal its  rawness,  floated  down  in  long  torn  pieces. 
I  was  frightened  at  the  extent  of  my  task  and  by 
the  weight  of  my  responsibility  and  I  wept  in 
silence. 

But  this  impression  was  only  passing  and  it 
was  the  memory  of  my  brother,  of  that  brave  com- 
rade whose  talent  I  recognized  and  in  whom  I 
had  as  much  faith  as  in  myself,  that  dissipated 
these  melancholy  thoughts. 

At  that  very  time  he  was  suffering  in  quite  a 
different  way  from  me.  After  leaving  Lyon  he 
went  to  stay  a  few  days  with  our  family,  first  at 
Nimes,  where  brotherly  hearts  received  him  with 
tenderness,  and  then  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
Vigan,  deep  within  the  Cevennes  in  the  Gard,  at 
the  house  of  some  young  and  pretty  girl  cousins. 

Our  sixteen-year  poet,  who  from  that  time  forth 
began  to  sing  of  beauty,  of  nature  and  of  love, 

26 


402  A  Ij) house  Daudet. 

saw  the  termination  of  his  short  vacation  arriving 
all  too  soon  to  please  his  wishes;  but  it  was  nec- 
essary to  leave  for  Alais. 

When  he  came  to  the  door  of  the  college  and 
knocked  to  enter,  he  was  so  small,  timid  and 
slender,  that  at  first  he  was  taken  for  a  scholar. 
For  a  moment  the  principal  was  on  the  point  of 
sending  him  away. 

"  Why,  he  is  a  child !  "  exclaimed  the  professor, 
jumping  up  and  down  on  his  chair.  "What  do 
they  suppose  I  can  do  with  a  child  .-• " 

"  For  one  moment  le  Petit  Chose  was  seized  by 
a  terrible  fear;  he  had  a  vision  of  himself  turned 
into  the  street  without  anything  to  eat.  He 
hardly  had  the  force  of  mind  to  stutter  a  few 
words  and  to  hand  to  the  principal  the  letter  of 
introduction  to  him  which  he  had  about  him." 

That  letter  worked  marvels;  the  reminiscence 
of  "  our  uncle  the  Abbd "  protected  my  brother 
and  they  kept  him.  Thus  it  was  that  he  began  to 
earn  his  bread  —  very  bitter  bread  it  is  true,  often 
moistened  with  tears  of  humiliation  and  rage. 

He  has  related  his  burning  sorrows  in  various 
pages  which  have  become  famous.  Turn  to  Le 
Petit  Chose.  He  is  Le  Petit  Chose  and  Sarlande 
is  Alais ;  in  that  part  of  his  novel  where  his  imag- 
ination has  studded  with  the  finest  of  pearls  a 
groundwork  of  truth,  all  that  was  necessary  for 
him  to  do  was  to  call  up  in  memory  the  distant 
actualities  in  order  to  fill  his  account  with  a  sin- 
cere and  moving  emotion. 

His   pupils   were   for    the   most   part   sons   of 


My  Brother  and  I.  403 

peasants,  or  badly  educated  little  scions  of  the 
gentry  who  took  a  hatred  to  that  small  pion,  so 
distinguished-looking,  delicate  and  proud,  as 
handsome  as  a  young  god ;  one  whose  look  indi- 
cated cleverness,  whilst  all  his  gestures  showed 
beneath  his  rustic  garments  a  native  elegance. 
His  delicacy  was  shocking  to  their  own  coarse- 
ness and  their  brutality  made  sport  of  his  physi- 
cal weakness.  Gladly  would  he  have  taken  part 
in  their  games  and  he  only  asked  that  they 
should  treat  him  as  a  comrade;  but  they  exas- 
perated him  by  their  meanness. 

What  malicious  children  they  were !  One  day, 
what  did  they  think  of,  but  to  drag  across  the  dark 
staircase  an  old  trunk  all  bristling  with  nails.-' 
Alphonse  could  not  see  it  and  he  had  a  bad 
tumble  which  came  very  near  killing  him.  An- 
other time,  whilst  out  walking,  it  was  necessary 
to  engage  in  fisticuffs  with  one  of  them  —  a 
powerful  fellow  who  had  rebelled  against  his 
authority.  The  worst  of  it  was,  that  after  these 
adventures  the  principal  always  placed  him  in  the 
wrong ;  he  was  anxious  to  keep  his  pupils  and,  as 
for  2,  pion,  that  sort  could  easily  be  replaced  ! 

My  brother  only  escaped  from  these  daily  mis- 
haps to  return  to  a  humble  provincial  interior, 
unhealthy,  full  of  envy,  perverted  and  grotesquely 
skeptical,  peopled  by  billiard  players,  smokers  of 
pipes,  frequenters  of  tap-houses,  forming  a  com- 
pletely dense  and  foolish  Bohemia,  where  at  every 
moment  some  trick  was  played  upon  his  simple- 
mindedness. 


404  Alpkofise  Daudet. 

If  this  torture  had  continued,  to  what  desperate 
resolutions  might  he  not  have  been  moved!  The 
news  of  my  departure  from  Lyon  increased  its 
severity ;  my  brother  understood  that  he  had  not 
much  longer  to  suffer  and  he  turned  his  look 
toward  Paris ;  for  thence  it  was  that  he  hoped  to 
see  the  arrival  of  deliverance  and  happiness.  One 
day  in  answer  to  a  letter  even  more  heartrending 
than  the  others  I  wrote  to  him  :  "  Come!  "  And, 
all  bruised  and  wounded,  the  little  bird  spread 
its  wings  to  find  a  refuge  near  to  me. 


My  Brother  and  I.  405 


CHAPTER   XVI.  1 

Twice  over  has  Alphonse  Daudet  told  the  story 
of  his  arrival  in  Paris;  for  the  first  time  in  Le 
Petit  Chose  and  for  a  second  in  Le  Noiiveati 
Temps,  a  newspaper  in  St.  Petersburg  which 
brought  his  works  to  the  knowledge  of  Russia. 
In  the  latter  he  has  published,  beside  other 
things,  some  episodes  from  his  life  as  a  man  of 
letters,  written  in  the  form  of  an  autobiography. 
Except  in  a  very  slight  number  of  details,  the  two 
stories  hardly  differ  one  from  the  other.  That 
one  which  brings  up  again  the  entire  reality  in 
pages  full  of  emotion  is  hardly  less  attractive  than 
the  other,  which  merely  used  that  reality  as  a 
source  of  inspiration  by  borrowing  from  it  various 
features  suitable  for  a  romance. 

1  Having  come  to  this  point  in  my  account  I  ouglit  to  call  to 
memory  the  fact  that  whatever  I  have  tried  to  say  concerning  my 
brother's  life  relates  to  that  part  of  it  which  is  common  to  both 
of  us.  As  to  that  which  is  personal  to  him,  I  am  bound  to  be 
very  brief,  in  order  not  to  forestall  the  account  which  he  ought  to 
make  for  himself,  either  in  his  memoirs  or  else  in  the  story  of 
his  works.  I  shall  therefore  say  no  more  than  what  I  consider 
the  necessary  completion  of  that  which  I  undertook  to  revive 
from  the  past ;  this  ought  to  show  the  writer  in  full  possession 
of  his  manhood,  after  the  picture  of  him  as  the  timid  child,  whose 
features  so  delicate  and  proud  have  been  sketched  by  my 
brotherly  pencil. 


4o6  Alphonse  DaucUt. 

In  both  cases  the  scene  is  the  same:  A  child 
seventeen  years  old,  unhappy  and  delicate,  arriv- 
ing in  Paris  with  an  empty  stomach  and  a  light 
purse,  observant,  eager  for  the  unknown,  hunger- 
ing for  new  sensations  and  filled  with  happy  pre- 
sentiments of  the  future,  but  made  timid  by  the 
extreme  of  his  misery  to  the  point  of  doubting 
himself  and  fearing  to  believe  in  his  own  star  — 
a  boy  still  too  young  and  poor  in  experience  to 
measure  the  intellectual  treasure  which  he  carries 
in  his  own  mind. 

As  a  framework  to  this  picture  there  are  the 
first  frosts  of  a  very  harsh  winter  —  it  was  the  first 
of  November,  1857  —  two  nights  spent  on  the 
hard  bench  of  a  third-class  coach,  the  pestiferous 
atmosphere  of  the  coach,  saturated  with  the  smell 
of  brandy  and  tobacco,  and  then  the  entrance  into 
Paris  at  dawn,  the  comforting  brotherly  embrace, 
the  drive  through  the  streets  of  the  city  just  awak- 
ening, the  banging  of  the  cab  on  the  cobble- 
stones, and  then  the  surprise  caused  by  the 
appearance  of  the  little  bedroom  succeeding  upon 
such  profound  impressions  of  the  arrival  —  that 
little  chamber  where  the  two  were  to  live  thence- 
forward on  privations,  hard  work  and  hope. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  tell  the  story  over  again, 
although  the  recollection  of  these  things  has 
remained  engraved  upon  my  memory  forever.  I 
only  want  to  recall  a  single  characteristic,  the 
wretched  condition  in  which  my  brother  reached 
me. 

I  can  see  him  still,  worn  out  with  weariness  and 


My  Brother  and  I.  407 

actual  need,  nearly  dead  with  cold,  wrapped  in 
an  old  renovated  overcoat  out  of  fashion  and, 
lest  an  entirely  original  appearance  should  be 
wanting  to  his  equipment,  shod  over  his  blue 
cotton  stockings  with  india-rubber  socks  —  those 
socks  of  india-rubber  which  have  won  no  little 
notoriety  in  the  world  since  they  inspired  one  of 
the  chapters  of  Le  Petit  Chose. 

Luckily  that  Lyon  tailor  was  on  hand.  Thanks 
to  him,  Alphonse  Daudet  was  soon  thoroughly 
changed  and  made  to  look  as  a  young  poet  should 
who  does  not  believe  that  rags  and  shoes  worn 
down  at  heel  are  necessary  equipments  for  the 
march  toward  the  conquest  of  renown. 

Even  at  that  period  he  was  handsome,  with  a 
beauty  altogether  impossible  to  believe:  "A  mar- 
vellously charming  head  "  Theodore  de  Banville 
wrote  some  years  later  in  his  Camies  Parisiens. 
"His  complexion  pale,  yet  with  warmth  and  the 
color  of  amber,  his  eyebrows  straight  and  silky, 
his  eye  brilliant  yet  deep,  at  once  moist  and  burn- 
ing —  an  eye  lost  in  revery  and  one  that  does 
not  see,  yet  is  most  delightful  to  see  —  his  mouth 
sensuous,  dreamy  and  rich  with  blood,  his  beard 
soft  and  childlike,  his  hair  abundant  and  brown 
and  his  ear  fine  and  delicate  —  all  these  come 
together  in  a  proudly  masculine  combination, 
despite  the  feminine  graces." 

And  now  let  the  reader  imagine  this  boy  of 
seventeen  years  turned  loose  in  Paris,  perfectly 
free  to  follow  his  own  bent  and  a  mark  for  all 
the  dangers  which  rise  up  before  young  people  in 


4o8  Alphonse  Daudet. 

a  great  city  —  perils  intensified  for  him  I  speak 
of  by  his  ignorance  of  customs  as  they  made 
themselves  known  to  him,  where  everything  was 
the  subject  for  surprise,  anxiety  and  embarrass- 
ment! 

Every  morning  I  left  for  my  newspaper;  we 
hardly  saw  each  other  again  till  evening  and 
although  about  that  time  some  of  our  new  friends 
who  were  acquainted  with  the  particulars  of  our 
common  existence  had  surnamed  me  "the  mother," 
my  watchfulness  was  powerless  to  protect  him  as 
much  as  I  would  have  wished. 

He  has  spoken,  in  the  pages  of  his  memoirs 
which  have  already  been  published,  of  the  first 
weeks  of  his  sojourn  in  Paris  with  a  penetrating 
melancholy.  "  With  the  exception  of  my  brother 
I  knew  nobody.  Short-sighted  and  clumsy  and 
timid  as  a  man  of  the  woods,  as  soon  as  I  left  my 
bedchamber  I  walked  round  the  Odeon  under  the 
arcade,  delighted  and  at  the  same  time  frightened 
at  rubbing  elbows  with  men  of  letters."  This 
melancholy  loneliness  did  not  last;  very  soon  he 
had  his  comrades  in  the  Quartier  Latin;  later 
some  of  them  became  his  friends,  such  as  Gam- 
betta  who  was  reading  law  and  dwelt  in  the  same 
apartment  house  with  us,  Amedee  Rolland,  Jean 
du  Bois,  Bataille,  Louis  Bouilhet,  Castagnary, 
Pierre  Veron,  Emmanuel  des  Essarts  and  many 
others  beside,  among  whom  were  Therion — the 
philosopher  Therion — whom  one  might  meet  any 
minute  with  some  old  book  under  his  arm,  read- 
ing everything,   knowing  everything,    discussing 


My  Brother  and  I.  409 

everything,  gesticulating  about  everything  —  a 
scientist  of  rare  merit,  but  of  troubled  mind  and 
a  lofty  soul  —  that  unforgettable  type,  who  was  to 
become,  later,  filys^e  M6raut  in  the  Rois  en 
Exit. 

My  brother  was  thrown  with  a  number  of  these 
men  living  in  the  artistic  and  literary  Bohemia 
of  that  time,  the  third  generation  of  that  most 
brilliant  set  after  1830  —  namely  with  Theophile 
Gautier,  Gerard  de  Nerval,  Arsene  Houssaye  and 
the  two  Johannots  —  a  Bohemia  which  had  al- 
ready been  precipitated  from  its  pedestal  about 
1850,  when  Henry  Murger  described  its  decadence, 
and  at  the  time  we  speak  of  was  absolutely  over- 
thrown, having  lost  all  its  poetry  and  its  attrac- 
tions at  the  period  when  we  reached  Paris. 

Since  that  time  Bohemia  has  had  two  historians. 
M.  Jules  Valles  has  found  therein  the  subject  of  a 
striking  book,  Les  R^fractah-es.  My  brother  knew 
there  the  unsuccessful  "down-at-heels  "  described 
in  "Jack."  Nobody  has  described  and  no  one 
hereafter  will  describe  as  well  as  he  did  what 
impotence,  jealousy,  narrowness  of  view  and  un- 
conscious perversity  existed  among  those  poor 
wretches  whom  laziness  conquered  without  a 
battle.  Surely  it  is  a  species  of  miracle,  as  I 
have  already  said,  that  he  could  have  passed 
through  the  midst  of  them  without  losing  a  bit  of 
his  talent  and  without  leaving  behind  the  flower 
of  his  youth,  the  freshness  of  his  soul  and  the 
uprightness  of  his  heart,  especially  as  one  remem- 
bers that  he  was  only  twenty  years  old. 


4IO  Alphonse  DaudeL 

He  has  often  shared  their  distress,  but  never 
their  disorderly  instinct.  He  was  always  suffi- 
ciently in  control  of  himself  to  study  the  reasons 
for  their  lot,  prevent  himself  from  succumbing 
to  the  same  and  visiting  that  deep  cavern  where 
they  abode  without  ever  letting  go  the  saving 
clew  which  was  to  bring  him  back  to  the  light, 
but,  contrary  to  what  might  have  been  feared, 
bringing  back  from  the  trip  new  powers  or  those 
which  up  to  that  moment  had  never  been  revealed. 

From  the  very  winter  which  followed  our  in- 
stallation at  Paris,  we  had  connections  in  other 
circles  also.  Claudius  H^brard  had  taken  us  to 
see  one  of  the  curators  of  the  Library  of  the 
Arsenal,  Eugene  Loudon,  a  writer  for  the  Catholic 
party,  who  united  at  his  house  a  few  friends  once 
a  week  in  a  little  circle.  All  the  arts  and  every 
opinion  were  represented  in  that  salon,  filled  as 
early  as  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening  with  the 
smoke  of  cigars,  which  rose  slowly  along  the 
shelves  crammed  with  books,  and  where  the  time 
was  passed  in  noisy  conversations  entirely  con- 
nected with  intellectual  things. 

This  modest  salon  even  put  on  the  airs  of  a 
conventicle;  for  women  were  absent  from  it  and 
the  men  who  came  there  flattered  themselves  that 
they  were  bound  together  by  a  bond  which  rested 
on  their  sympathy  in  common  and  on  the  desire, 
dear  to  them  all,  of  rising  higher  in  the  world. 

There  we  met  Amed^e  Pommier,  a  poet  of  the 
fine  old  style,  who  was  already  an  old  man,  a 
remnant  from  the  literary  battles  of   1830;  Vital 


My  Brother  and  I.  411 

Dubray,  a  talented  sculptor,  who  expiated  under 
the  Republic  those  favors  with  which  the  Empire 
had  overwhelmed  him;  Jules  Duvaux,  the  mili- 
tary painter;  Augustin  Largent,  a  sensitive  soul 
and  somewhat  simple,  who  afterwards  became  an 
Oratorian  monk;  the  two  Sirouys,  one  of  whom 
painted,  some  years  ago,  the  frescos  for  the  palace 
of  the  Legion  of  Honor;  Develay,  "dramatic 
author,"  who  made  a  boast  of  the  fact  that  he 
had  never  found  a  director  of  a  theatre  who  was 
bold  enough  to  put  his  work  on  the  stage,  although 
he  had  sent  in  to  the  theatres  of  Paris  more  than 
thirty  dramas  in  verse,  fragments  from  which  he 
spouted  forth  with  a  tumultuous  emphasis;  Henri 
de  Bornier,  timid  and  obscure,  walking  about 
with  La  Fille  de  Roland,  his  masterpiece,  in  his 
brain ;  and  I  forget  how  many  more. 

Among  these  men,  who  were  all  our  seniors,  we 
were  mere  children,  especially  my  brother,  whose 
beardless  face  made  him  seem  still  younger  than 
he  was.  At  that  time  he  was  getting  his  first 
volume  ready:  Les  Amoitreiises. 

It  was  at  the  Arsenal  that  we  were  able  to  esti- 
mate the  effect  which  the  opening  of  the  career  of 
such  a  poet  and  author  would  produce.  There, 
too,  we  got  to  know  our  neighbor  the  publisher, 
Jules  Tardieu,  a  poet  himself,  who  wanted  to  be 
the  bringer-out  of  the  volume;  there,  too,  one 
evening  we  saw  fidouard  Thierry,  who,  a  few 
months  later,  introduced  my  brother's  work  to  the 
readers  of  the  Moniteiir  Officiel. 

Eugene  Loudon's  drawing-room  opened  others 


412  Alphonse  Daudet. 

to  us.  At  the  houses  of  Mme.  Ancelot  and 
of  Mme.  M61anie  Waldor  and  Mme.  Olympe 
Chodsko  and  in  the  drawing-room  of  Mme. 
Perriere-Pilt6,  who  exercised  the  function  of  grand 
fashionable  protectoress  of  letters,  my  brother 
recited  Les  Prunes,  Les  Cerises,  Trois  Jours  de 
Vendange  and  prologues  for  comedies,  generously 
pouring  out  the  contents  of  a  portfolio,  ever  filled 
again,  before  lovely  ladies,  who  were  in  ecstasy 
over  his  elegant  manners,  brilliant  youth,  warm 
Southern  voice  and  seductive  beauty.  The  pub- 
lication of  Les  Amoureuses  did  not  give  the  lie  to 
that  impression.  This  charming  book,  published 
by  Jules  Tardieu  under  a  fine  white  cover  deco- 
rated in  red,  earned  for  Alphonse  Daudet  at  once 
the  regard  of  men  of  letters  and  of  sensitive 
minds. 

Within  twenty-four  hours  he  was  ranked  among 
those  beginners  of  whom  the  world  says:  "He's 
somebody."  fidouard  Thierry  devoted  a  long  and 
eloquent  column  of  eulogy  to  him  in  his  literary 
feuilleton.  "When  Alfred  de  Musset  died," 
said  he,  "two  pens  were  left  by  him  at  the  service 
of  the  man  who  could  take  them  up :  the  pen  for 
prose  and  the  pen  for  poetry.  Octave  Feuillet 
inherited  one  of  them  and  Alphonse  Daudet  has 
just  claimed  heirship  to  the  other." 

The  good  fellow  did  not  suspect  that  he  would 
have  to  complete  that  flattering  appreciation  later 

—  the  spirit,  if  not  the  text  of  which  I  reproduce 

—  and  that  Alphonse  Daudet  would  become  one 
of  the  first  prose  writers  of  his  time. 


My  Brother  and  I.  413 

Nevertheless  this  brilliant  entrance  into  letters 
did  not  bring  fortune  for  us  with  it.  It  bright- 
ened the  future  with  a  ray  of  hope,  without  soften- 
ing the  anxieties  of  the  present  moment.  We 
made  a  fine  appearance  in  the  social  world;  at 
Augustine  Brohan's  house,  where  my  brother  had 
been  asked  one  evening,  he  had  been  taken,  even 
by  the  mistress  of  the  house  herself,  for  a  Wal- 
lach  prince.  But  we  were  still  living  like  neces- 
sity students,  having  hardly  anything  to  support 
us  save  that  which  I  made  in  the  newspaper  office. 
We  only  left  our  garret  in  the  Hotel  du  Senat  to 
climb  up  into  another  one,  and  there,  thanks  to 
the  trustfulness  of  a  furniture  dealer,  furnish  our 
interior  beneath  the  eaves  of  an  enormous  struc- 
ture on  the  Rue  Bonaparte,  which  was,  however, 
so  leant  up  against  Saint-Germain  des  Pres  that 
we  were  able  to  indulge  in  an  illusion  and  believe 
that  we  were  living  in  the  belfry.  We  had  good 
reason  to  fear  being  kept  for  a  long  time  to 
come  in  a  life  full  of  privations;  but  we  were  so 
young  that  in  sober  truth  the  perspective  was  not 
so  very  discouraging  after  all. 

But  a  sudden  change  was  about  to  take  place  in 
our  life  and  it  is  my  duty  now  to  tell  in  what  new 
conditions  it  was  to  find  me. 


414  Alphonse  Daudet. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

It  may  be  remembered  that  on  the  14th  of  January 
1858  I  had  been  attached  for  more  than  two 
months  to  the  staff  of  the  Spectateur  when  the 
attempt  to  assassinate  the  emperor  near  the  opera 
house  took  place.  The  evening  of  that  day  our 
poHtical  director  Mallac  sent  to  the  press  for  ap- 
pearance in  next  day's  number  an  article  consider- 
ing this  very  serious  event;  in  the  course  of  it  he 
developed  the  following  thesis:  Only  under  des- 
potic governments  is  it  possible  for  the  world  to 
see  such  crimes  as  that  which  has  just  been  com- 
mitted by  Orsini.  Despotism  calls  out  and  pro- 
vokes revolution.  Legitimate  sovereigns,  protected 
by  their  hereditary  right  and  the  love  of  their 
subjects  and  placed  at  the  apex  of  a  rigorously 
constitutional  power,  have  nothing  to  fear  from 
assassins. 

The  two-fold  objection  to  this  reasoning  is  patent 
to  every  one :  It  is  contrary  to  the  truth  of  history 
and  in  the  circumstances  that  existed  it  exposed 
the  paper  at  least  to  a  warning  if  not  an  immediate 
suppression. 

Mallac's  comrades  on  the  staff  drew  his  atten- 
tions to  this,  but  he  would  not  listen  to  objections. 


My  Brother  and  /.  415 

The  business  director  who  represented  the  prop- 
erty of  the  paper  succeeded  no  better.  After 
having  engaged  in  an  extremely  violent  discussion 
with  him,  Mallac  passed  a  good  part  of  the  night 
at  the  printing  office  in  order  to  be  quite  sure  that 
his  article  would  be  published. 

Next  morning  when  I  reached  the  office  at  the 
usual  hour  I  found  the  staff  there  in  full  numbers 

—  members  of  the    committee  and    shareholders 

—  the  entire  crowd  wearing  a  thunderstruck  ap- 
pearance. An  Imperial  decree,  citing  with  appro- 
bation a  report  by  Minister  of  the  Interior  Billault, 
ordered  the  suppression  of  the  Spectateur  and  at 
the  same  time  that  oi  La  Revue  de  Paris,  which  at 
that  time  was  managed  by  Laurent  Pichat,  Louis 
Ulbach  and  Maxime  du  Camp. 

That  was  a  hard  blow  for  the  fusionist  politics 
which  the  Spectateur  represented,  but  it  was  a  real 
disaster  for  my  brother  and  me.  I  had  just  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  permission  that  he  should  be 
tried  for  the  chronicle  of  local  news  and  I  am  not 
sure  but  that  his  first  article  had  already  been 
written. 

Luckily  the  disaster  was  overcome  very  soon  up 
to  a  certain  point;  U Union  fell  heir  to  the  sub- 
scribers and  the  editorial  staff  of  the  suppressed 
paper.  So  it  came  about  that  I  was  turned  over 
to  the  legitimist  paper,  with  my  salary,  it  is  true, 
very  notably  decreased.  "  We  are  poor,"  they 
told  me,  "  but  we  have  enough  to  procure  daily 
bread  for  us  all." 

I  stayed  there  for  some  months  and  then  I  was 


4i6  Alphonse  Daudet. 

asked  to  go  to  Blois  to  replace  for  a  time  the 
editor-in-chief  of  the  France  Centrale.  When  I 
came  back  my  place  was  taken  and  they  never 
returned  it  to  me.  I  felt  a  very  lively  indignation  at 
that ;  I  was  twenty-two  years  old  and  had  a  great 
deal  of  ambition  and  the  strongest  will  to  help 
reconstruct  the  ruined  hearth.  But  it  was  not  by 
dying  of  hunger  in  the  service  of  a  party  which 
did  not  know  how  to  keep  even  young  men  with 
it;  nor  was  it  by  writing  the  memoirs  of  an  old 
nobleman,  chamberlain  to  Charles  X,  whose  secre- 
tary I  had  become,  that  I  could  make  my  designs 
and  plans  real.  The  Empire  was  in  full  prosperity 
and  inspired  no  repugnance  whatever  in  me.  Not 
having  known  the  horrors  of  the  coup  d'etat,  I 
was  not  able  to  share  the  rancors  felt  by  the 
conquered.  An  entire  generation,  which  has 
cruelly  expiated  its  error  and  its  inexperience 
since  then,  believed  at  that  time  the  very  thing  that 
I  myself  was  thinking. 

So  it  came  about  that  I  knocked  at  the  door  of 
Vicomte  de  la  Gueronniere  who  at  that  time 
directed  the  matters  of  the  press  at  the  Ministry 
of  the  Interior.  I  was  received  most  charmingly 
by  that  amiable  man,  who  would  have  left  a  deep 
trace  in  the  history  of  his  country  if  his  character 
had  been  equal  to  his  talent.  I  told  him  my  situ- 
ation and  a  few  days  afterwards  he  sent  me  to 
Privas  to  take  the  editorship  of  the  EcJio  de  t Ar- 
dhhe,  promising  to  recall  me  very  soon. 

Privas  after  Paris !  A  lowly  provincial  news- 
paper after  one  of  the  great  organs  of  the  French 


My  Brother  and  I.  417 

press — what  a  fall!  And  then,  what  a  sorrow  at 
leaving  my  brother  !  Still,  it  was  necessary  to  be 
resigned  and  I  left,  buoyed  up  by  the  hope  of 
returning  and  also  consoled  because  this  banish- 
ment from  Paris  was  bringing  me  nearer  to  my 
mother  who  was  still  at  Nimes,  and  to  another 
person  very  dear  to  my  heart  who  a  little  while 
after  was  to  bear  my  name. 

It  was  while  at  Privas  that  I  heard  of  the  begin- 
nings made  by  Alphonse  Daudet  in  Le  Figaro.  I 
had  known  Villemessant  during  my  short  stay  in 
Blois  whither  he  often  came,  and  having  been  asked 
to  stay  a  couple  of  days  at  Chambon,  his  fine  prop- 
erty, I  had  talked  to  him  of  my  brother,  whom  he 
very  soon  learned  to  know  and  whose  qualities  he 
quickly  estimated  at  their  worth.  It  was  a  great 
happiness  to  all.  The  Figaro  was  a  sort  of  conse- 
cration for  an  author,  a  brevet  accorded  to  talent 
and  the  doors  of  the  editors  opened  wide. 

My  brother  began  his  fame  there,  first  with 
chronicles  in  verse  and  prose-studies  and  dialogue 
scenes :  Le  Roman  du  Chaperon  Rouge,  Les  Ros- 
signols  dn  Cimetiere,  L  'Amonr  Trornpette  —  then 
longer  stories  there  and  in  other  places,  continued 
for  several  years,  which  in  their  briefness  were 
impressed  with  so  sweet  a  charm  that  they  created 
for  him  who  wrote  them  a  position  quite  apart  in 
contemporary  literature,  even  before  he  dreamt  of 
writing  books  of  long-continued  effort. 

These  fine  literary  bits  which  are  worthy  of 
standing  in  some  classical  collection  may  be  read 
to-day  in  his  Lettres  de  mon  Moulin   and  in  his 

27 


41 8  Alphonse  Daudet. 

Contes  du  Lundi,  as  well  as  in  Robert  Helniont}  in 
Femntes  d' Artistes  and  in  his  Lettres  a  un  Absent. 
They  are  compounded  at  one  and  the  same  time 
of  imagination  and  historical  fact  and  bear  in 
the  highest  degree  the  mark  that  reveals  his  state 
of  mind  at  the  time  when  they  were  written. 

In  one  he  permits  his  imagination  to  flutter 
hither  and  thither  across  fields  and  gambol  ac- 
cording to  its  caprice  beneath  the  sunshine  and 
through  the  warm  air  of  the  South,  all  balmy  with 
the  fragrance  of  the  pines  to  which  he  listens  as 
they  sound  above  the  wild  rocks  of  Provence. 

In  another  he  recalls  the  memories  of  his  voy- 
ages, in  the  course  of  which  he  has  looked  upon 
men  and  things  with  that  mysterious  glance  of  his 
and  that  certainty  in  his  mind,  clever  to  question 
and  observe  them ;  and  then  in  a  third  he  allows 
his  soul,  torn  with  patriotic  anguish  or  bursting 
with  a  holy  indignation,  to  explode  at  the  spectacle 
of  the  misfortunes  of  his  country.  Laughter  and 
weeping  —  upon  that  harmonious  board  the  gamut 
is  complete  and  all  the  notes  are  present. 

There  too  are  some  of  the  works  in  their  germs 
which  he  wrote  later:  L ArUsienne,  Le  N'abab, 
Jack;  they  will  be  found  there  in  a  thousand 
scattered  parts  in  their  first  and  summary  form, 
just  as  they  were  seen  by  him  at  first  before  the 
labor  undertaken  by  his  mind  had  drawn  their 
lines  exact  and  arranged   their  development. 

The  success  of  these  studies,  which  hardly  had 

^  Robert  Helniont  is  now  published  alone  without  the  other 
stories. 


My  Brother  and  I.  419 

anything  analogous  to  them  in  French  literature 
before  their  day,  was  very  lively.  Echoes  of  it 
reached  me  in  my  distant  exile,  where  my  brother 
corroborated  them  later  on  when  he  came  to  pass 
a  few  weeks  with  me  and  where  he  brought  me  a 
great  piece  of  news,  as  if  to  prove  to  me  that,  after 
all,  life  was  beginning  to  smile  upon  us.  Having 
had  the  chance  of  meeting  Comte  de  Morny,  that 
notable  person,  the  most  powerful  of  the  powerful 
at  that  period,  charmed  by  his  talent,  had  prom- 
ised him  an  office  in  the  Bureau  of  the  President 
of  the  Corps  Legislatif,  one  of  those  places  which 
the  great  lords  of  a  bygone  day  had  created  for 
the  benefit  of  poor  men  of  letters  and  which  per- 
mitted such  men  to  work  freely,  unhampered  by 
the  vexations  of  material  support.  As  soon  as  he 
returned  to  Paris  my  brother  was  to  take  posses- 
sion of  it. 

"  But  I  am  a  Legitimist  "  he  had  proudly  objected 
when  he  heard  the  kindly  offer  of  his  new  pro- 
tector ;  and  what  should  the  other  do  but  answer 
laughingly: 

"  The  Empress  is  more  Legitimist  than  you  !  " 
That  is  all  I  shall  say  of  the  relations  between 
Alphonse  Daudet  and  M.  de  Morny,  since  I  do 
not  care  to  take  the  edge  off  that  part  of  my 
brother's  memoirs  which  he  will  devote  to  it. 
The  certainty  of  being  protected  by  him  aroused 
our  hopes  and  caused  us  to  look  into  the  future 
through  very  rosy  spectacles.  My  brother's  stsly 
at  Privas  was  charged  with  this  feeling  of  confi- 
dence ;  we  passed  some  delightful  vacations  there 


420  Alphonse  Daudet. 

and  together  made  long  excursions  into  the  moun- 
tains ;  then  he  left  me  to  go  to  Nimes,  from  which 
town  he  departed  for  Provence  to  stay  in  the 
hospitable  house  at  Fontvieille,  whence  the  first 
of  the  letters  "  de  mon  moulin "  might  well  be 
dated. 

During  this  trip  it  was  that  he  learned  to  know 
Frederic  Mistral,  Theodore  Aubanel,  Roumanille 
and  all  the  Felibres,  and  connected  himself  with 
them  by  a  friendship  which  time  has  never  shaken. 
Returning  to  Paris  he  proceeded  to  take  his 
place  in  the  office  of  the  President  of  the  Corps 
Legislatif. 

From  that  moment  on  my  looks  were  constantly 
fixed  upon  the  Palais-Bourbon ;  I  was  dying  of 
ennui  at  Privas  and  was  resolved  that  I  should 
not  stay  there  much  longer ;  moreover  my  brother 
had  promised  me  to  help  shorten  my  stay.  Just 
at  that  moment  an  occasion  offered  itself  to  him 
to  keep  his  promise  and  he  seized  upon  it. 

At  that  time  the  Imperial  Government  was  pre- 
paring the  grand  reforms  which  were  to  be  applied 
at  the  beginning  of  1861  ;  a  certain  amount  of 
liberty  was  about  to  be  allowed  the  Chamber. 
M.  de  Morny,  as  President  of  the  Corps  Legislatif, 
occupied  himself  with  an  increase  of  the  number 
of  secretaries  whose  duty  it  was  to  edit  the  reports 
of  the  debates.  He  had  two  positions  in  his  gift; 
for  one  of  them  he  had  already  chosen  Ludovic 
Hal^vy,  who  was  giving  a  prelude  in  modest  essays 
to  his  brilliant  career  as  a  dramatic  author;  my 
brother  proposed  me  for  the  other  and  made  me 


My  Brother  and  I,  421 

accept  it  at  the  very  moment  when,  without  wait- 
ing for  him  to  call  me,  I  had  just  arrived  again  in 
Paris,  urged  on  by  a  presentiment  of  my  good 
fortune. 

"  The  President  wants  to  know  you,"  said  he  to 
me  one  evening;  "he  will  receive  you  to-morrow 
morning  at  seven  o'clock." 

You  may  imagine  that  I  was  on  time.  A  cab 
deposited  me  before  the  wide  terrace  in  front  of 
the  President's  palace  exactly  at  seven  o'clock. 
Having  a  conviction  that  the  great  personages  in 
this  world  are  not  to  be  approached  save  in 
evening  dress  and  white  necktie,  I  had  dressed 
myself  as  I  did  on  the  day  of  my  first  trip  about 
Paris.  It  was  November  and  not  very  light;  my 
dress  did  not  produce  any  effect  whatever  upon 
the  presidential  vestibule,  or  rather  it  produced 
a  very  deplorable  one,  for  it  was  not  until  after 
I  had  mentioned  my  name  that  the  messengers 
deigned  to  be  polite.  One  of  them  conducted  me 
into  the  "  Chinese  drawing-room  "  and  asked  me 
to  wait. 

It  was  a  marvel,  that  drawing-room,  with  all  its 
collections  —  carved  ivories  and  jades,  pot-bellied 
bronzes,  junks  and  pagodas  in  minature,  wonder- 
ful monsters,  squatted  dogs  and  screens  covered 
with  gold  and  embroideries  !  But  the  trouble  was 
that  they  forgot  me  there.  One  o'clock  arrived 
and  I  had  not  obtained  my  reception.  My  stomach 
cried  cupboard ;  I  walked  from  the  window  to  the 
chimney  and  from  the  chimney  to  the  window, 
overwhelmed    by  impatience,   worn    out   and    my 


422  Alphonse  Daudet. 

underclothes  sticking  to  me  through  the  exercise 
I  had  had  in  trying  all  the  furniture  for  a  seat. 

Finally,  worn  out  and  at  the  end  of  my  resources, 
there  came  a  time  when  I  stationed  myself  before 
a  mirror  in  order  to  "  repair  the  disorder  of  my 
dress."  As  I  was  engaged  in  this  somewhat  deli- 
cate operation  with  all  the  coolness  of  a  man  who 
knows  that  nobody  is  remembering  his  existence, 
suddenly  a  door  opened.  Much  abashed  I  threw 
my  overcoat  across  my  unbuttoned  waistcoat  — 
but  I  was  already  alone  once  more,  after  having 
seen  a  stream  of  silken  gown,  the  profile  of  a 
blonde  lady  and  the  smoke  of  a  cigarette  pass 
across  my  vision.  Afterwards  I  learned  that  it 
was  Mme.  de  Morny.     She  notified  her  husband. 

He  came  in  hastily  in  his  close-fitting  blue  velvet 
coat,  with  his  black  skull-cap  upon  his  bald  head. 

"  Who  are  you  —  what  are  you  doing  there?  " 

I  gave  him  my  name. 

"  Oh,  my  poor  boy,  I  entirely  forgot  you.  .  .  . 
Well,  your  brother  has  talked  to  me  about  you ; 
you  wish  to  be  secretary-editor  and  it  seems  that 
political  affairs  are  familiar  to  you.  You  are  nom- 
inated ;  go  and  see  M.  Valette  the  secretary- 
general  ;  he  will  present  you  to  M.  Denis  de 
Lagarde,  your  chief  .  .  ." 

My  audience  did  not  last  three  minutes,  but  I 
never  forgot  my  long  wait,  for  it  had  brought  me 
good  fortune.  I  only  had  to  go  downstairs  to  the 
entresol  to  find  my  brother  and  announce  the 
success  of  his  efforts.  He  lived  there  side  by 
side  with  Ernest  I'Epine,   who  at  that  time  man- 


My  Brother  and  I.  423 

aged  M.  de  Morny's  office,  and  in  the  midst  of 
these  serious  occupations,  pleasantly  broken  by 
artistic  junketings,  prepared  the  future  successes 
for  his  supremely  clever  Quatrelles.  At  that  very 
time,  along  with  Alphonse  Daudet,  he  was  consider- 
ing those  plans  of  collaboration  which  were  real- 
ized successively  in  La  Dernihe  I  dole,  LQiillet 
Blanc  and  Le  Frkre  Afn^. 

Notwithstanding  the  success  which  these  plays 
obtained,  this  kind  of  collaboration  could  never 
persuade  Alphonse  Daudet  of  the  efficaciousness 
of  a  combined  labor  of  two  persons,  when  it  was  a 
question  of  literary  work.  He  has  remained  con- 
vinced that  notwithstanding  the  conscientiousness 
of  two  writers  harnessed  to  the  same  book  or  the 
same  play,  when  the  time  comes  to  reap  the  moral 
harvest  of  their  joint  work,  there  is  always  one 
who  is  disillusioned,  and  therefore  since  that  time 
he  has  renounced  every  attempt  with  the  same 
thought.  It  is  true  he  has  called  upon  the  kind 
services  of  his  literary  comrades  when  he  has 
wished  to  make  a  play  out  of  Fromont  Jeune 
et  Risler  Ain^  \n  the  first  place,  and  from  Le  Nabah 
afterwards ;  but  in  these  cases  it  was  only  a  ques- 
tion of  arranging  scenes  which  were  already  in 
existence,  somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  "  enlarge- 
ment," a  placing  of  things  in  the  proper  focus 
where  the  part  assigned  to  the  collaborator  was 
too  small  for  a  possibility  that  any  doubt  could 
arise  concerning  the  real  paternity  of  the  success 
of  the  work. 

My  true  existence  as  a  Parisian,  a  man  of  letters 


424  Alphonse  DaudeL 

and  journalist,  dates  from  my  entrance  into  the 
Corps  Legislatif.  The  sessions  were  short,  for 
they  lasted  only  three  or  four  months,  and  they 
allowed  me  leisure  which  was  entirely  devoted  to 
my  labors  with  the  pen. 

Some  day  I  intend  to  relate  what  I  can  recall 
from  that  journey  of  twenty  years  through  the 
world  of  politics  and  the  press.  I  only  want  to 
allude  to  it  here  in  order  to  recall  one  episode  in 
my  life  which  my  brother  knew  nothing  about  and 
which  I  would  not  have  spoken  of,  had  not  people 
associated  it  with  him  later  in  connection  with  his 
novel  Le  Nabab. 

In  1863  I  had  been  for  two  years  in  the  Corps 
Legislatif  A  correspondent  for  two  big  provincial 
newspapers,  I  also  belonged  to  the  editorial  staff 
of  La  France,  which  was  managed  at  that  time  by 
the  Vicomte  de  la  Gueronniere,  a  paper  in  which 
I  had  just  started  the  "  parliamentary  echoes." 
My  name  had  already  gained  a  certain  notoriety ; 
a  favorable  wind  filled  my  sails ;  the  paternal 
hearth  had  been  built  anew  and  my  own  was  ris- 
ing; it  was  one  of  the  happiest  moments  of  my 
life. 

Whilst  the  general  elections  which  took  place 
that  year  were  being  held,  I  happened  to  be  at 
Nimes  during  the  vacation.  One  of  my  friends 
took  me  to  see  the  Nabob,  that  is  to  say,  Fran(^ois 
Bravay.  He  had  just  come  from  Egypt  and  was 
presenting  himself  to  the  electors  in  one  of  the 
electoral  districts  of  the  Gard.  In  order  to  make 
a  success  of  his  running  he  had  promised  the  peo- 


My  Brother  and  I.  425 

pie  of  that  part  of  France  an  irrigation  canal  which 
was  to  render  their  soil  fertile,  a  soil  which  is  ren- 
dered sterile  through  lack  of  water. 

At  a  later  period  this  promise  was  judged  by 
the  Corps  Legislatif  to  be  an  electoral  trick  and 
the  memory  of  it  always  cast  an  unfavorable 
shadow  upon  Francois  Bravay,  even  after  he  had 
been  elected  for  the  third  time  in  succession  and 
forced  the  gates  of  the  Palais  Bourbon,  though 
his  other  two  elections  had  been  declared  invalid. 
Nevertheless  that  promise  had  been  sincere.  He 
had  given  it  due  effect  by  spending  a  million 
francs  in  good  ringing  money  to  meet  the  expenses 
of  the  first  work  on  the  canal.  He  knew  my  rela- 
tions with  the  Paris  journals  and  asked  me  to 
support  his  candidacy. 

Then,  when  he  was  elected  and  borne  onward 
to  the  chamber  by  the  enthusiasm  of  the  people 
whom  his  generosity  and  reputation  as  a  million- 
aire had  excited,  aided  as  he  w^as  by  a  fervent 
speech  as  rude  as  his  own  personality,  but  very 
well  suited  to  be  understood  by  "  the  rural,"  he 
suggested  that  I  should  become  his  political  secre- 
tary. I  accepted  the  position  and  have  never  had 
reason  to  regret  it. 

I  have  never  known  a  more  upright  heart  than 
his.  One  of  my  regrets  has  been  that  I  did  not 
possess  the  necessary  influence  to  enforce  my 
own  advice  and  make  him  understand  how  worth- 
less some  of  the  people  were  who  surrounded  him. 
His  constant  trips  to  Egypt  and  the  confusion  of 
his  life,  forever  worried  by  beggars  on  the  one  side 


426,  Alphonse  Daudet. 

and  the  need  of  money  created  by  their  demands 
on  the  other,  caused  my  activity  in  his  case  to 
be  too  often  a  mere  sinecure.  But  as  long  as  he 
remained  a  deputy  he  never  drew  my  attention  to 
the  fact  and  he  always  remembered  the  ardor  with 
which  I  had  embraced  his  interests.  Among  all 
my  friends  he  is  one  of  those  to  whom  I  am  most 
passionately  devoted  and  I  have  never  ceased  to 
believe  that  he  was  worthy  of  inspiring  that  affec- 
tion. His  misfortune  had  been,  while  springing 
from  a  very  low  origin,  to  have  enriched  himself 
too  quickly  by  those  means  which  are  familiar  to 
men  who  have  gone  to  the  Orient  to  make  their 
fortune,  and  to  have  returned  to  France  without 
any  knowledge  either  of  Paris  or  of  the  new 
surroundings  in  which  he  was  called  upon  to  live, 
where,  for  that  very  reason  indeed,  he  was  certain 
to  ruin  himself  just  as  quickly  as  he  had 
obtained  wealth  in  the  East.  The  portrait  which 
my  brother  has  traced  of  this  man  in  an  unforget- 
table book  leaves  nothing  for  me  to  add,  unless  it 
be  that  when  he  speaks  of  the  exquisite  kindliness 
of  that  perfectly  simple  soul,  notwithstanding  all 
appearances  to  the  contrary,  the  author  of  Le 
Nabab  exaggerated  nothing.  In  the  eyes  of  those 
who  have  known  and  loved  Francois  Bravay  the 
novel  of  which  he  is  the  hero  is  the  best  work 
in  the  world  to  raise  a  monument  to  his  memory 
and  to  avenge  him  for  clumsy  calumnies.  To  con- 
vince oneself  of  this  it  is  only  necessary  to  read 
the  last  paragraph :  "  His  lips  moved  gently  and 
his  dilated  eyes,  turning  toward  de  Gery,  were  filled 


My  Brother  and  I.  427 

before  death  came  with  a  mournful  expression. 
They  looked  imploring  and  yet  disgusted,  as  if 
he  wished  to  cite  him  as  a  witness  to  one  of  the 
greatest  and  cruellest  injustices  that  Paris  has  ever 
committed." 

How  was  it  possible,  therefore,  that  a  calculated 
malice  should  have  attempted  to  make  people  be- 
lieve that  all  those  eloquent  pages  constituted  an 
insult  to  his  memory,  so  that  at  one  moment  the 
relatives  of  Francois  Bravay  actually  shared  the 
unjust  belief?  I  have  not  yet  been  able  to  under- 
stand it. 

But  what  is  much  more  serious  is  the  fact  that 
they  wished  to  prove  that  my  brother  committed 
an  act  of  black  ingratitude.  At  the  time  when  he 
had  to  defend  himself  against  this  charge  he  begged 
me  not  to  interfere ;  that  literary  quarrel  being 
entirely  personal  and  foreign  to  the  intrinsic  merit 
of  his  work,  it  was  too  wounding  to  his  literary 
delicacy  that  he  should  have  wished  to  complicate 
it  by  intervention  from  my  side. 

But  to-day  I  have  recovered  freedom  to  say  that 
Alphonse  Daudet  was  engaged  to  Francois  Bravay 
by  no  bond  of  recollection  which  stood  in  the  way 
of  his  right  as  a  novelist.  He  had  hardly  seen 
him  more  than  two  or  three  times,  and  although 
that  sudden  and  passing  sight  of  him  had  been 
enough  to  give  him  an  impression  of  the  man  and 
his  surroundings,  completed  as  the  picture  was  by 
what  he  already  knew  of  him  and  what  he  learned 
afterward,  that  could  not  be  compared  in  any  way 
to  one  of  those  services  which  condemns  to  silence 


428  Alphonse  Daudet. 

the  man  who  has  received  them.  So  my  brother 
could  write  Le  Nabab,  for  even  I  myself,  if  I  had 
had  the  talent  to  make  it  what  it  is,  I  would  have 
written  and  signed  it  without  thinking  that  I  was 
false  to  any  duty. 


My  Brother  and  I.  429 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

During  the  year  1 86 1  my  brother's  health,  which 
had  been  shaken  by  the  violent  attacks  upon  the 
nerves  that  life  in  Paris  brings,  was  pretty  seriously 
affected.  Dr.  Marchal  de  Calvi,  a  great  friend  of 
letters  and  men  of  letters,  had  him  under  his  charge 
and  surrounded  him  with  anxious  care  and  atten- 
tions just  as  a  gardener  would  cherish  some  rare 
flower.  When  winter  approached  he  declared  to 
him  up  and  down  that  he  must  leave  the  city  and 
go  in  search  of  health  to  the  country  of  the  sun- 
light, because  that  was  the  only  means  to  avoid 
compromising  the  future  irrevocably.  His  verdict 
was  formal  and  my  brother  obeyed,  leaving  for 
Algiers,  where  he  passed  several  months. 

He  has  often  told  me  of  the  details  of  that  trip 
which  left  a  profound  impression  upon  his  spirit 
and  his  works;  his  stay  in  Algiers  and  his  excur- 
sions into  the  country  parts  and  visits  to  Arab 
chiefs,  his  long  rides  through  the  mountains  upon 
a  mule  which  carried  strapped  to  its  neck  a  flask 
full  of  a  certain  oil  made  forsooth  of  the  liver  of 
the  cod,  powerful  doses  of  which  he  was  called 
upon  to  swallow. 

But  of  all  the  treatment  which  had  been  ordered 
for  him  he  observed  scarcely  a  single  one  except 


430  Alp  house  Daudet. 

that.  As  to  the  one  which  ordered  him  to  rest 
absolutely,  he  observed  that  by  over-doing  every- 
thing and  spending  his  strength  by  running  to  the 
right  and  left,  seeking  sensations,  joyous  at  new 
discoveries,  observing  and  writing  down  every  even- 
ing his  impressions  of  the  day  on  those  little  note- 
books he  has  been  collecting  for  twenty  years,  in 
which  his  entire  past  and  future  work  will  be  found 
in  embryo. 

"  In  these  note-books,"  said  he  in  the  preface  to 
Fromont  Jeune  et  Risler  Aht^,"  there  is  sometimes 
nothing  but  a  skimped  line  for  remarks  and  for 
thoughts  —  something  to  recall  to  me  a  gesture  or 
intonation  which  may  be  developed  and  augmented 
later  to  complete  the  harmony  of  some  important 
work.  At  Paris  as  well  as  on  journeys  and  in  the 
country  these  memorandum  books  have  become 
blackened  with  lines  without  a  thought,  even  with- 
out thinking  of  the  future  work  which  was  piling 
up  in  them  ;  proper  names  sometimes  are  met  with 
there  which  I  have  not  been  able  to  change  because 
I  find  in  proper  names  a  kind  of  physiognomy,  an 
impress  very  like  the  people  who  bear  them." 

When  my  brother  returned  from  Algiers  in  the 
spring  his  health  gave  us  no  more  disquiet,  al- 
though it  demanded  a  good  deal  of  care,  but  his 
note-books  were  teeming  with  a  multitude  of  pre- 
cious memoranda.  A  charming  study  of  Milianah 
which  has  found  a  place  in  Lcttrcs  dc  Moii  Moulin^ 
a  story  called  Kadoiir  et  Katel  in  the  first  edition 
of  Robert  Helmont,  as  well  as  Un  D^cor^  du  Qtiinze 
Aolit,  and  Namoun  the  little  Arab  in  Le  Sacrifice, 


My  Brother  and  I.  431 

and  finally  the  immortal  Tartarin  de  Tarascon  — 
all  these  Alphonse  Daudet  brought  back  from 
Algiers,  a  rich  booty,  as  one  can  see,  in  which  no 
account  is  taken  of  the  visions  of  the  sun,  land- 
scapes and  blue  skies,  whose  fruitful  light  has 
remained  luminous  in  his  memory. 

During  his  absence  the  Odeon  theatre  had 
played  his  Dernihe  Idole,  that  play  in  one  act 
which  he  wrote  conjointly  with  Ernest  I'Epine. 
Just  as  my  brother  left  for  Algiers  the  rehearsals 
of  his  play  were  about  to  begin ;  his  collaborator 
was  to  have  directed  them,  but  he  fell  ill  at  the 
same  time  and  I  had  the  task  of  following  them  up. 
Tisserant,  who  played  the  principal  character,  had 
undertaken  to  place  it  on  the  stage ;  Mdlle.  Rous- 
seil  made  her  debut  in  the  character  of  handsome 
Madame  Ambroy,  and  although  a  one-act  piece 
was  in  question,  the  theatre  expected  a  success. 

Our  common  hopes  were  indeed  by  no  means 
dashed  and  those  who  were  present  at  the  first 
night  would  be  able  to  recall  the  fact.  If  I  call 
for  their  testimony  it  is  only  to  prove  that  I  exag- 
gerate nothing.  The  old  authors  tossed  their 
heads,  saying:  "It  isn't  the  drama!"  But  they 
applauded  all  the  same;  I  can  still  see  Paul  de 
Saint-Victor  seated  in  his  box  and  applauding  with 
his  hands. 

The  audience  was  one  of  the  most  brilliant.  It 
was  understood  that  M.  de  Morny  was  interested 
in  the  two  authors,  and  there  he  was,  somewhat 
surprised  at  the  warm  applause  from  the  public, 
without  understanding  very  well  those  scenes  re- 


432  Alphonse  Daudet, 

plete  with  emotion,  yet  such  as  to  draw  tears  from 
the  most  skeptical ;  but  his  wife,  carried  away  by 
dehght,  broke  her  fan  while  applauding.  The  very 
next  day  I  sent  the  news  of  the  success  to  my 
brother ;  it  reached  him  deep  in  the  interior  of  I 
know  not  what  far-distant  country.  Since  then  he 
has  told  me  that  in  the  midst  of  the  incidents  of 
his  splendid  journey  the  news  left  him  entirely 
cold,  so  small,  far-distant  and  forgotten  did  Paris 
seem  to  him  at  that  moment. 

The  following  year  Marchal  de  Calvi  insisted 
again  that  he  must  leave  at  the  approach  of  the 
frost  and  this  time  he  went  to  Corsica.  There 
very  different  emotions  awaited  him.  Traces  can 
be  found  in  his  short  stories  —  read  Marie  Anto, 
Le  Phare  dcs  Safigiiinaires,  V Agonie  de  la  Sc'inil- 
lante  —  and  last,  not  least,  Le  Nabab,  in  which  his 
remembrances  of  Ajaccio  have  clearly  had  their 
influence  on  the  financial  combinations  of  the 
rascal  Paganetti  and  the  electoral  scenes  re- 
counted by  Paul  de  Gery. 

After  two  winters  passed  in  this  fashion  far  from 
Paris  my  brother  was  able  to  take  up  again  his 
old  way  of  living,  for  the  warm  air  of  the  South 
was  no  longer  indispensable  to  him.  It  was  merely 
prudence  which  suggested  the  idea  of  leaving  again 
at  the  end  of  1863.  But  he  stopped  short  in  Pro- 
vence ;  his  stay  there  was  full  of  hard  work ;  it  is 
enough  to  read  his  books  to  convince  one  of  that. 

From  that  epoch  on  belongs  more  especially  the 
period  when  the  South  and  Southerners  entered  into 
his  work,  for  that  was  the  time  when  he  studied 


My  Brother  and  I.  433 

them  in  their  landscapes,  their  social  life  and  their 
customs,  filling  out  his  daily  observations  with  the 
recollections  drawn  from  the  past,  adapting  a  char- 
acteristic found  living  in  some  person  whom  he  met 
there  or  elsewhere,  making  himself  the  historian 
of  the  fashions  and  habits  of  a  race  just  as  others 
have  made  themselves  the  historians  of  the  events 
of  a  country. 

In  pursuance  of  his  method  of  describing  noth- 
ing but  what  he  had  seen,  never  relating  anything 
but  what  had  happened  to  him  and  of  taking 
everything  from  reality  —  stories,  descriptions  and 
characters  —  every  new  discovery  which  he  made 
in  the  course  of  human  adventures,  every  inner 
event  which  played  itself  off  under  his  own  eyes 
are  just  so  many  sources  which  sooner  or  later  will 
be  sure  to  enrich  his  intellectual  domain.  I  am 
much  inclined  to  believe  that  it  was  particularly 
during  the  period  of  his  sojourn  in  Provence  that 
he  took  the  measure  of  the  fruitful  power  of  this 
procedure  and  when  he  definitely  laid  down  for 
himself  the  rule  which  he  has  rigorously  observed 
ever  since. 

What  literary  wealth  does  he  not  owe  to  that 
severe  discipline  of  his  mind  !  It  has  given  actu- 
ality and  modernity  to  his  books,  which  is  as  much 
as  saying  it  has  given  one  of  the  conditions  for 
success  in  a  social  fabric  carried  away  by  its  thirst 
for  enjoyment,  burnt  as  if  with  fever,  which  has  no 
longer  any  time  to  reflect  and  turn  the  mind  upon 
the  days  which  are  already  past — a  society  that 
is  all  the  while  tormented  by  the  desire  of  seeing 

28 


434  Alphonse  Daudet. 

itself  live  again  in  works  of  fiction  which  shall 
translate  its  passions,  virtues  and  vices,  which  shall 
teach  people  to  understand  themselves  without 
ever  imposing  any  obligation  of  studying  them- 
selves or  what  relates  to  them. 

It  is  quite  true  that  a  special  organization  is 
needed  to  put  this  system  into  action  with  good 
results,  a  flame  of  personal  energy,  a  gift  from 
nature  which  the  most  laborious  efforts  can  never 
add  to  one  who  did  not  find  it  in  his  cradle, 
fimile  Zola,  making  an  estimate  of  Alphonse 
Daudet's  talent,  wrote  some  time  ago:  "Kindly 
nature  has  placed  him  in  that  delightful  border- 
land where  poetry  ends  and  reality  commences." 
There  we  have  the  principal  cause  of  the  literary 
good  fortune  of  my  brother  concisely  defined. 

But  in  order  to  understand  the  long  strides 
which  he  has  made  toward  renown  since  that  time, 
it  is  necessary  to  take  some  account  of  that  cease- 
less labor  of  his  mind  of  which  I  just  spoke  and  of 
his  ambition  which  ever  turned  its  face  toward 
betterment.  Notwithstanding  these  natural  gifts 
he  might  have  lingered  on  the  way,  if  he  had  not 
constantly  stimulated  and  developed  them,  refin- 
ing them  through  his  tenacious  will,  never  weary, 
always  ready  to  exert  his  strength  in  order  to 
make  the  work  of  his  hand  more  perfect. 

Events  that  happened  at  the  close  of  the  Em- 
pire, the  anguish  felt  at  the  siege  of  Paris,  the 
tragedies  under  the  Commune  and  all  those  start- 
ling episodes  which  seem  to  be  part  and  parcel  of 
our  individual  history  because  they  have  weighed 


My  Brother  and  I.  435 

so  greatly  on  the  destiny  of  each  of  us,  were  sure 
to  inspire  and  in  fact  did  inspire  more  than  one 
author.  Novelists  and  poets  have  made  use  of 
those  incidents,  referring  to  them  in  their  verses 
or  including  them  in  the  framework  of  the  plots 
in  their  stories.  How  does  it  happen  that  no- 
where are  they  more  living  than  in  the  pages 
which  Alphonse  Daudet  has  devoted  to  them? 
Just  exactly  because  he  related  them  as  a  realist 
and  as  a  poet  besides.  The  flame  of  his  talent  has 
gilded  reality  and  not  only  clothed  it  with  all  the 
graces  of  an  original  and  penetrating  style,  but 
lent  it  the  accent  of  an  infinite  tenderness  which 
starts  the  tears.  And  in  fact  the  most  ordinary 
trait,  when  it  is  touched  by  this  master  workman, 
becomes  a  jewel  rare. 

Would  you  like  an  example  of  the  effect  which 
he  could  produce  by  the  simplest  means?  Open 
the  Conies  dit  Lundi  and  re-read  La  Dernih'e 
Classe.  The  scene  is  a  poor  Alsatian  village  on 
the  day  when,  submitting  to  the  conqueror,  the 
French  province  is  about  to  become  a  German 
one.  The  teacher  is  giving  his  lesson  for  the  last 
time  in  French  —  he  has  asked  in  the  parents  of 
his  pupils  in  order  to  make  his  farewell  to  them 
and  at  the  same  time  on  that  day  of  mourning 
call  them  to  witness  to  his  ardent  love  for  the 
conquered  fatherland,  as  well  as  sow  in  their  souls 
before  he  leaves  them  that  seed  of  patriotism 
whose  flowers  they  may  leave  as  heritages  to  their 
children.  A  little  schoolboy  who  had  come  to 
school  that  day  just  the  same  as  every  day  relates 


43^  Alphonse  Daudet. 

the  scene,  and  that  is  all  —  hardly  more  than  a 
trifling  event  which  the  newspaper  of  the  adjacent 
town  perhaps  might  have  placed  in  its  columns  of 
local  news ! 

Now  observe  what  that  unimportant  fact  be- 
comes under  the  pen  of  Alphonse  Daudet.  With- 
out adding  a  single  thing  except  the  emotion  that 
fills  his  soul  and  the  magic  of  his  style,  without 
uttering  a  single  noisy  word  or  one  of  those  some- 
what coarse  sayings  which  are  like  an  eternal 
menace  of  reprisals  hereafter  in  the  speeches  of 
the  conquered  to  the  victor,  statements  which  he 
would  have  been  very  excusable  to  have  used  in 
the  circumstances,  he  has  written  eight  pages  with- 
out overstepping  the  tone  of  a  cool  narrative  — 
eight  pages  which  form  the  most  eloquent  protest 
which  has  ever  been  raised  against  a  barbarous 
law  that  treats  a  people  like  so  much  cattle. 

If  one  desires  to  look  through  his  works  for 
other  proofs  of  that  so  personal  a  gift  of  causing 
reality  to  live  again  in  his  stories,  without  allowing 
a  bit  of  its  power  to  be  lost,  but  on  the  contrary 
through  the  art  of  arranging  words  giving  it  the 
saliency  of  life,  they  can  be  found  by  hundreds. 

I  will  take  the  death  of  the  Due  de  Morny. 
My  brother  was  present ;  hour  after  hour  he  fol- 
lowed that  intimate  drama  which  the  important 
place  held  by  the  dying  man  was  about  to  trans- 
form into  a  drama  of  history.  He  saw  sickness 
enter  the  palace  and  death  clinging  to  the  walls 
covered  with  black  hangings.  He  has  caught 
from  the  very  life  the  fright  of  the  politicians  and 


My  Brother  and  I.  437 

phrase-mongers,  in  whose  eyes  the  event  took  on 
the  proportions  of  a  catastrophe.  He  Hstened  to 
the  comments  of  the  lackeys,  torn  between  the 
pride  of  having  served  so  powerful  a  master,  regret 
at  losing  him  and  haste  to  find  some  destiny  or 
lot  elsewhere.  He  assisted  in  destroying  the  in- 
timate papers  and  a  voluminous  correspondence, 
witnesses  to  the  baseness  of  human  beings,  which 
the  dead  man  did  not  wish  to  leave  behind  him. 
He  entered  the  room  of  death  at  the  very  moment 
when  the  embalmer  left  it.  Every  one  of  those 
touches  which  he  collected  as  they  occurred  went 
into  the  note-books  to  enlarge  the  materials  of  the 
novelist. 

Now  take  the  pages  of  Le  Nabah  in  which  he 
has  remolded  that  striking  picture  for  which  there 
is  a  first  sketch  in  Robert  Helmoiit  (first  edition). 
Though  you  had  opened  the  book  supposing  it  a 
work  of  pure  imagination,  though  you  were  en- 
tirely ignorant  of  modern  history  to  the  point  of 
ignoring  the  fact  that  it  contains  the  truth,  yet  you 
would  not  be  able  to  read  that  chapter,  between 
the  white  of  whose  lines  sarcasm  peeps  out,  sarcasm 
aroused  in  the  mind  of  the  story-teller  by  such  ex- 
amples of  the  vanity  and  impotence  of  men,  with- 
out divining  that  the  death  which  he  relates  was 
also  the  symptom  which  foreruns  a  terrible  fall, 
that  it  was  not  merely  some  imperial  duke  who 
was  disappearing  from  the  scene,  but  the  whole  of 
an  enormous  edifice  which  was  beginning  to  crum- 
ble to  its  fall.  The  exactness  with  which  things 
seen   are  reproduced  when  not  a  single  political 


438  Alphonse  Daudet. 

allusion  can  be  met  with,  the  life  which  the  painter 
has  given  them,  the  art  with  which  he  has  intro- 
duced into  his  account  all  those  looks  of  anguish 
whose  trace  he  has  caught  upon  all  those  fright- 
ened faces,  are  quite  sufficient  to  reveal  that  which 
he  did  not  say.  Produced  by  such  simple  means, 
the  effect  remains  most  striking.  In  works  of  art 
that  is  the  true  mark  of  talent,  by  which  I  mean 
the  talent  which  assures  their  lasting  quality. 


My  Brother  and  I.  439 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

The  death  of  the  Due  de  Morny  decided  my 
brother  to  carry  out  a  project  he  had  debated 
for  a  long  time,  the  project  of  recovering  his  Hb- 
erty.  He  was  indeed  actually  too  much  of  a  man 
of  letters  to  persist  in  living  otherwise  than  by  his 
pen  when  the  first  difficulty  had  once  been  mas- 
tered. As  soon  as  it  appeared  that  the  indepen- 
dence of  his  ideas  might  be  compromised  thereby 
he  left  the  Corps  Legislatif. 

Is  it  necessary  to  add  that  during  the  stay  which 
he  made  in  that  office  he  never  either  wrote  a  line 
or  performed  an  act  which  could  be  considered  in 
the  light  of  a  sacrifice  of  that  same  independence 
to  the  demands  of  his  situation?  Throughout  his 
entire  life  he  has  had  the  good  fortune  of  living 
detached  from  every  sort  of  political  bond.  "  I 
am  a  Legitimist "  he  had  said  to  M.  de  Morny 
when  he  entered  his  office  for  the  first  time.  That 
little  bit  of  a  Southerner's  boasting  was  less  a 
truth,  even  at  that  time,  than  it  was  a  manifestation 
of  native  pride  and  perchance  the  homage  paid 
by  him  to  opinions  which  had  been  professed  in 
his  father's  house.  But  my  brother  would  not  say 
such  a  thing  as  that  to-day. 


440,  Alphonse  Daudet. 

And  this,  not  because  he  has  had  time  or  indeed 
the  will  since  then  to  form  for  himself  a  very  clear 
feeling  of  the  kind  of  government  which  is  best 
fitted  to  France;  it  was  disdain  of  politics.  He 
expressed  that  disdain  one  day  in  indignant  terms 
in  the  epilogue  to  Robert  Helmotit  (first  edition). 

"  O  politics,  how  I  hate  you  !  I  hate  you  be- 
cause you  are  coarse,  unjust,  noisy  and  babbling; 
because  you  are  the  enemy  of  art  and  of  labor ; 
because  you  serve  as  a  label  for  every  kind  of  folly, 
for  all  sorts  of  ambitions  and  for  lazinesses  of  every 
variety.  Blind  and  passionate,  you  separate  hon- 
est hearts  which  were  made  to  be  united.  And  on 
the  contrary  you  knit  together  individuals  who  are 
in  every  respect  unlike  each  other.  You  are  the 
great  solvent  of  consciences,  you  teach  the  custom 
of  lying  and  of  subterfuges,  and  thanks  to  you  we 
see  honest  people  becoming  the  friends  of  knaves 
as  long  as  they  are  both  members  of  the  same 
party.  And  in  especial  do  I  hate  you,  O  pol- 
itics, because  you  have  reached  the  point  of  kill- 
ing in  our  hearts  all  feeling  and  idea  for  our 
country.  .   .    " 

After  having  read  that  virulent  apostrophe  it 
might  seem  rather  difficult  to  classify  my  brother 
in  one  party  or  another,  notwithstanding  the 
friendships  which  he  may  have  otherwise  made  to 
right  and  left  among  the  admirers  of  his  talent 
or  to  believe  that  he  desired  to  classify  himself 
under  any  mark  or  label.  Too  often  had  he  rea- 
son to  congratulate  himself  on  that  happy  inde- 
pendence to  be  disposed  to  depart  from  it. 


My  Brother  and  I.  441 

There  is  more  than  one  man  to-day  who  regrets 
he  did  not  follow  his  example.  Without  profess- 
ing as  he  did  a  disdain  of  politics  pushed  to  the 
point  of  hatred  and  whilst  recognizing  that  the 
misfortunes  of  the  French  have  their  origin  espe- 
cially in  an  indifference  to  politics  felt  in  former 
ages,  still,  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  farther  we 
get  along,  the  less  do  men  of  letters  and  sensitive 
natures  feel  that  they  can  congratulate  themselves 
on  having  plunged  into  the  hurly-burly  of  our  cur- 
rent quarrels.  If  one  conquers,  the  harvest  is 
envy ;  if  conquered,  injustice.  Most  implacable  of 
all  are  political  resentments. 

I  know  something  about  it,  I  who  consider  my- 
self a  passionate  lover  of  liberty  and  have  never 
proved  a  traitor,  and  yet  whom  certain  men  have 
never  forgiven  the  modest  share  which  I  had  in 
the  perhaps  inexpedient  but  rigorously  legal  act 
of  the  Twenty-fourth  of  May.  In  1876,  when  the 
verdict  at  the  polls  proved  conclusively  to  us  that 
we  had  been  mistaken,  it  was  all  in  vain  that  I 
voluntarily  resigned  the  functions  which  I  was  per- 
forming ;  it  was  all  in  vain  that  when  my  friends 
invited  me  to  take  them  up  again  at  the  Sixteenth 
of  May,  I  refused  the  offer;  in  vain  for  me  to 
abstain  since  that  time  from  any  systematic  belit- 
tling of  a  government  whose  defenders  I  had 
attacked  in  quite  other  circumstances  —  the  men 
I  speak  of  have  never  laid  down  their  arms,  but 
have  continued  to  treat  me  as  a  foe,  although  I 
never  provoked  either  their  goodwill  or  theii 
anger. 


442 ,  Alphonse  Daudet. 

They  have  not  even  spared  my  literary  works, 
concerning  which  certain  members  of  their  set 
wrote  while  speaking  of  me  :  "  Daudet !  —  not  the 
one  who  has  some  talent,  the  other  —  "  believing 
that  they  were  aiming  a  profound  blow  at  my  self- 
respect  through  that  malicious  reference  to  the 
successes  won  by  my  brother.  The  serenity  with 
which  I  express  myself  to-day  may  prove  to  them 
how  greatly  they  have  been  mistaken ;  I  only 
allude  to  it  in  order  to  show  the  implacability  of 
resentments  which  are  born  of  politics,  from  which 
Alphonse  Daudet  has  escaped. 

Left  at  length  entirely  to  himself,  he  devoted 
himself  absolutely  to  letters.  Then  began  that 
long  series  of  stories,  comedies,  dramas  and 
novels  which  have  consecrated  his  fame  as  step  by 
step  they  marked  the  persevering  rise  of  his 
talents.  Successively  he  published  the  Letters 
from  My  Mill,  a  collection  made  up  of  his  impres- 
sions in  the  South,  Le  Petit  Chose,  partly  inspired 
by  our  childhood,  which  he  wrote  in  midwinter  at 
a  modest  farm  in  Languedoc  where  he  lived  alone 
like  a  hermit  for  several  weeks,  having  an  old  copy 
of  Montaigne  as  his  only  companion,  the  reading 
of  which  rested  him  after  his  laborious  watches. 
He  had  LCEillet  Blanc  played  at  the  Th^^tre 
Francais,  Les  Absents  at  the  Opera-Comique  and 
Le  Fr^re  Am/ and  Le  Sacrifice  at  the  Vaudeville. 

In  the  course  of  his  halts  in  the  world  of  theatres 
he  reaped  a  rich  harvest  of  notes  and  observations 
upon  actors,  filling  his  barn  with  the  fruitful  corn 
from   which    later   the    character  of  Delobelle  in 


My  Brother  and  I.  443 

Fromont  Jeune  et  Risler  Ain^  was  to  spring,  as 
well  as  the  critical  appreciations  which  one  can 
still  read  in  a  collection  of  his  dramatic  criticisms 
from  L'Officiel,  through  which  he  has  scattered 
the  leading  chapters  of  a  history  of  theatrical 
criticism. 

Speaking  of  this  part  of  his  life  work,  I  have 
often  heard  people  express  astonishment  that  his 
plays  did  not  meet  with  the  same  favor  from  the 
public  as  his  books.  It  is  quite  true  that  he  has 
never  carried  off  one  of  those  victories  of  the 
boards  which  afford  fortune  to  an  author  of  a 
theatre.  I  am  not  speaking  of  the  plays  which 
he  adapted  from  his  novels ;  the  latter  came  upon 
the  boards  protected  by  the  memory  of  the 
resounding  success  which  they  had  had  in  their 
earlier  form,  though  sometimes  even  this  remem- 
brance was  a  weight  upon  rather  than  a  service  to 
them,  particularly  when  the  public  did  not  find  on 
the  stage  in  their  fullness  and  set  within  their  de- 
scriptive framework  those  individual  types  which 
had  charmed  it  the  most.  As  to  the  others,  with 
the  exception  perhaps  of  La  Dernikre  Idole,  they 
have  usually  given  their  author  more  expense  than 
satisfaction. 

In  this  undeniable  fact  I  am  almost  tempted  to 
see  a  proof  of  his  superiority,  or,  if  you  prefer,  the 
inferiority  of  the  scenic  art.  The  books  of 
Alphonse  Daudet  owe  their  greatest  attraction 
more  especially  to  the  details,  to  descriptions, 
analysis  of  events  and  the  composition  of  the  cast 
of  characters,  to  I  know  not  what  personal,  original 


444  Alphonse  Daudet. 

and  seductive  quality  which  theatrical  conventions 
piteously  destroy.  His  best  qualities  are  exactly 
contrary  to  those  which  the  modern  boards  exact, 
where  conversation  means  little  and  the  fact 
brought  forth  is  of  value  only  through  the  manner 
whereby  it  catches  the  observation  and  interest  of 
the  spectator. 

On  a  single  occasion  only  has  my  brother  been 
tempted  to  write  a  drama  suited  to  the  taste  of  the 
day  and  in  a  form  which  allowed  no  room  for  his 
poetical  expansiveness.  He  allowed  himself  to  be 
got  around  by  theatrical  people  and  produced 
Lise  Tavernier  and  he  came  to  grief  It  may  be 
alleged  that  the  play  was  put  in  the  most  grotesque 
fashion  on  the  stage ;  at  the  Ambigu  Theatre  we 
were  still  under  the  management  of  Billion  in  1872 
—  which  says  everything;  but  even  if  it  had  been 
put  on  the  stage  by  a  director  who  was  more 
anxious  to  uphold  the  dignity  of  art,  I  do  not 
believe  that  it  would  have  produced  a  better 
result. 

Toward  the  end  of  that  year  Alphonse  Daudet 
gave  the  measure  of  what  he  was  able  to  do  for  the 
theatre  with  U ArUsienne .  This  tragic  idyl  he  has 
clothed  in  the  most  brilliant  decorations ;  he  has 
touched  all  its  periods  with  the  hand  of  love,  as  if 
they  were  the  stanzas  of  a  pastoral  poem ;  in  the 
scenery  drawn  from  Provence  he  has  caused  the 
entire  gamut  of  passion  to  sound.  From  the  very 
day  when  he  began  that  work  he  had  a  fever,  and 
that  fever  did  not  cease  until  the  evening  of  the  first 
performance  in  the  lassitude  and  disappointment 


My  Brother  and  I.  445 

which  a  doubtful  victory  brought  with  it.  In 
every  sentence  he  scattered  profusely  the  finest 
pearls  his  wallet  contained ;  he  has  written  pages 
in  that  work  which  you  cannot  read  without  feeling 
your  soul  oppressed  by  a  poignant  emotion. 

Nevertheless  the  effect  on  the  boards  did  not 
answer  his  expectations.  Is  it  because  the  action 
is  too  local  ?  Is  it  because  Mireille  had  exhausted 
the  interest  felt  by  Parisians  for  things  of  Provence? 
Or  is  it  because  L' Arl^siemte  would  have  had  an- 
other destiny  upon  some  other  stage  than  that  of 
the  Vaudeville,  in  some  other  atmosphere  than  that 
of  the  corner  of  the  Chaussee  d'Antin,  so  fero- 
ciously cynical?  I  am  well  disposed  to  believe  it, 
for  but  little  was  lacking  and  the  uncertain  success 
of  the  play,  sufficient  as  it  was  to  do  honor  to  an 
author's  career,  would  have  transformed  itself  into 
an  incontestable  triumph. 


446  Alphonse  Daudet. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

I  AM  editing  these  notes  somewhat  at  haphazard, 
just  as  they  come  into  my  mind,  without  being 
careful  of  the  chronological  order  of  these  intimate 
events  that  I  am  jotting  down  at  present  rather 
than  relating.  So  that  the  reader  will  not  be  sur- 
prised if,  after  talking  of  plays  given  in  1872  in 
order  not  to  have  to  revert  to  them,  I  should  go 
back  in  time  in  order  to  find  Alphonse  Daudet 
where  we  just  now  left  him,  that  is  to  say,  at  the 
moment  when  he  has  just  left  the  only  employment 
that  he  ever  held. 

At  this  time  he  lived  the  greater  part  of  the 
year  in  the  country.  He  loved  the  forests  which 
surround  Paris,  lavishing  the  tenderness  which  he 
has  always  had  for  things  of  nature  upon  them  — 
waters,  forests  and  mountains  —  a  tenderness  which 
caused  him  to  suddenly  leave  some  village  far 
away  in  the  valley  of  Chevreuse  to  make  a  walk- 
ing tour  through  the  Vosges  and  Alsatia. 

He  has  always  eagerly  searched  for  sensations 
which  exterior  objects  bring  forth.  In  the  preface 
of  Fromont  Jeune  et  Rislcr  Atn^  he  relates  how  the 
mere  chance  which  made  him  settle  in  the  Marais 
caused  the  selection  of  the  neighborhood  in  which 


My  Brother  and  I.  447 

he  has  framed  the  action  of  his  novel.  Analogous 
circumstances  exercised  the  same  kind  of  influence 
on  the  making  of  his  other  books ;  that  is  particu- 
larly true  oi  Jack,  in  which  many  pages  contain 
recollections  of  long  excursions  made  by  him  into 
the  country  about  Paris  toward  Corbeil  on  the 
banks  of  the  Seine  where  his  marriage  was  destined 
to  lead  him  and  make  him  a  fixture  for  several 
months  in  every  year. 

This  marriage  took  place  early  in  1867;  in  the 
course  of  the  preceding  summer  we  had  been 
installed  at  Ville-d'Avray  in  the  family  circle,  but 
my  brother,  who  was  ill,  had  remained  in  Paris. 
An  epidemic  of  cholera  drove  him  out,  so  he  came 
and  settled  down  with  us.  One  day  some  friends 
who  lived  in  the  neighborhood  called  upon  us  and 
brought  with  them  one  of  their  relatives,  a  Made- 
moiselle Julia  Allard,  a  most  charming  young  girl, 
highly  educated  and  learned.  It  had  been  her 
good  fortune  to  grow  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  ten- 
derness and  poetry  between  a  father  and  mother 
passionately  stirred  by  intellectual  things  who  were 
poets  themselves.  A  few  months  after  that  she 
bore  the  name  of  Alphonse  Daudet. 

Although  she  had  already  proved  herself  a 
writer  by  publishing  Les  Impressions  de  Nature  et 
dArt,  wherein  the  childhood  of  a  Parisian  girl  can 
be  read,  detached  notes,  impressions  which  recall 
things  merely  glimpsed  and  a  dozen  studies  on 
recent  books,  yet  I  would  not  have  talked  about 
it,  because  I  know  how  scared  she  is  by  any  noise 
made  about  her,  if  it  had  not  been  that  my  brother 


448  Alphonse  Daudet. 

himself  has  publicly  acknowledged  the  influence 
which  she  has  exerted  over  his  works. 

Alphonse  Daudet  being  the  man  we  know  him, 
the  partner  whom  he  took  for  life  might  have 
quenched  the  pure  flame  of  his  spirit  and  killed 
his  talent,  if  he  had  made  a  mistake  in  his  choice. 
Fear  of  just  this  danger  had  always  mastered  him 
and  kept  him  from  marriage.  An  expression  of 
this  made  after  his  marriage  will  be  found  in 
Femmes  d' Artistes,  more  particularly  in  the  story 
which  opens  that  volume,  Madame  Heurtebise. 
All  of  us  shared  in  this  fear  for  him,  but  his  wife 
has  been  the  very  peace  of  his  hearth,  the  regu- 
lator of  his  work  and  the  discreet  counsellor  of 
his  inspiration. 

"  She  is  herself  so  much  of  an  artist !  She  has 
taken  such  a  share  in  everything  that  I  have 
written !  Not  a  page  which  she  has  not  revised 
and  retouched  and  on  which  she  has  not  scattered 
a  little  bit  of  her  fine  golden  and  azure  powder. 
And  so  modest  withal,  so  simple,  so  little  the 
literary  woman !  One  day  I  expressed  all  this 
and  bore  witness  to  a  charming  and  indefatigable 
collaboration  in  the  dedication  to  Le  Nabab ;  my 
wife  has  not  permitted  that  dedication  to  appear, 
and  so  I  have  allowed  it  to  stand  only  upon  ten 
or  twelve  copies  for  friends." 

I  know  of  nothing  more  eloquent  than  this 
simple  homage  which  is  no  less  to  the  honor  of 
him  who  gave  it  than  of  her  who  merited  it.  At 
the  time  that  my  sister-in-law,  yielding  to  the 
urgent  requests  of  her  husband,  had  just  published 


My  Brother  and  /.  449 

her  collection  of  impressions,  after  a  few  hours 
passed  between  her  and  my  brother  one  evening, 
quite  moved  by  the  happiness  I  found  in  their 
house,  I  wrote  a  few  lines  on  returning  to  my 
home  which  seem  in  place  for  this  study,  the  pre- 
text for  them  being  her  book  just  out.  These 
lines  form  as  it  were  a  precise  picture  of  the  lucky 
household  where  art  is  god  and  where  the  radiance 
of  the  happiness  one  perceives  makes  a  striking 
and  heart-warming  contrast  with  the  harsh  begin- 
nings which  I  have  related. 

"  The  working  room  is  broad  and  lofty.  The 
master  of  the  household  is  seated  before  a  table 
piled  with  papers  and  books  beneath  the  white 
rays  of  the  lamp,  the  brilliancy  of  which  is  softened 
by  a  shade  in  stamped  paper;  he  is  writing  the 
new  book  promised  to  the  people,  announced 
by  the  papers  and  expected  by  translators  and 
editors.  Between  each  sentence,  after  having  care- 
fully chosen  all  the  words  and  carved  all  the  lines, 
he  makes  a  stop,  listening  to  the  promptings  of  his 
imagination  but  disciplining  it  in  order  to  keep  it 
within  the  limits  of  truth,  or  to  drag  it  back  when- 
ever it  is  tempted  to  exceed  the  bounds.  The 
characters  whose  adventures  he  describes  and 
whose  souls,  instincts  and  passions  he  reveals  to 
us  pass  before  his  eyes. 

"  With  the  precision  of  a  painter  from  the  life 
he  reproduces  them  exactly  as  he  has  known 
them ;  he  is  anxious  to  render  them  as  truthfully 
as  nature  itself,  employing  in  the  struggle  after 
nicety  of  expression,  elevation  of  thought,  descrip- 

29 


450  Alphonse  Daudet. 

tion  of  scenery  and  surroundings  and  purity  of 
style,  that  vigor,  that  gracefulness,  that  fancy  and 
all  those  master  qualities  which  exist  in  him  and 
with  which  he  decorates  the  offspring  of  his 
dreams  under  the  most  ardent  searchings  of  con- 
science, never  acknowledging  himself  satisfied  until 
he  has  exhausted  all  the  forms  of  that  effort  and 
thus  proclaiming  the  respect  which  he  has  for  the 
public  and  that  which  he  has  for  himself. 

"  Over  against  him  at  the  other  end  of  the  table 
his  wife  has  come  quietly  in  and  taken  her  seat, 
after  having  watched  at  the  bedside  of  the  children 
and  kissed  their  brows  good-night.  It  is  a  perfect 
hour,  propitious  to  that  quiet  labor  which  en- 
genders fine  works  of  art.  The  noises  of  the 
streets  seem  dampened  and  the  whole  house  slum- 
bers ;  this  silence  so  deep  is  wholesome.  A  log 
burns  with  a  merry  note  on  the  hearth,  the  flame 
therefrom  dances  above  the  glowing  embers  and 
hangs  sparks  of  red  on  the  gilded  frames  of  the 
pictures  and  the  copper  vases  in  which  green 
plants  are  growing.  Never  did  a  sweeter  and 
gentler  eloquence  emanate  from  the  intimate  soul 
of  that  domestic  happiness,  never  from  the 
serenity  of  that  family  hearth  where  glory  has 
been   a  visitor. 

"  The  young  mother  lets  herself  drift  at  the  will 
of  her  dreams;  she  enjoys  the  present  and  tries  to 
divine  the  future,  and  through  an  involuntary  need 
of  comparing  what  she  knew  before  with  what  she 
possesses  now  and  what  she  hopes  to  have,  she  lets 
her  thoughts  turn  toward  the  past.     She  sees  once 


My  Brother  and  I.  451 

more  her  infancy  and  is  at  once  transported  into 
another  home,  warm  also,  comfortable  and  peace- 
ful and  full  of  caresses.  She  sees  the  days  that 
are  passed.  Here  she  is  in  command,  there  she 
obeyed,  and  that  itself  was  very  sweet.  She  regrets 
nothing  in  that  past,  but  on  the  contrary  thinks  of 
it  with  joy ;  her  memory  is  full  of  its  echoes  and 
recalls  its  souvenirs,  dear  to  her  mind. 

"  And  so,  seated  at  her  happy  table  where  talent 
is  infectious,  seated  opposite  that  man  who  is  every- 
thing to  her  and  whose  pen  is  writing  masterpieces, 
she  suddenly  feels  herself  seized  in  short  by  a 
sort  of  nostalgia,  then  she  lets  fall  in  harmonious 
stanzas  in  prose  or  in  verse  these  suddenly  resur- 
rected souvenirs  upon  the  white  page  lying  beneath 
her  hand.  Such  happy  evenings  are  often  renewed 
and  when  summer  comes  they  are  completed  by 
delightful  days  of  country  life  in  the  house  among 
the  fields  backing  up  against  the  forest,  where  the 
emerald-colored  vines  and  the  Chinese  glycines 
with  their  blue  flowers  are  mirrored  in  the  stream." 


452  Alphonse  DaudeL 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

Up  to  1873  Alphonse  Daudet  had  shown  himself 
averse  to  works  that  need  long  labor.  He  had 
written  two  novels,  Le  Petit  Chose  and  Tartarin  de 
Tarascon,  but  these  were  his  works  at  the  begin- 
ning and  belong  much  earlier  in  his  career;  he 
hardly  seemed  disposed  to  take  up  again  a  series 
which  had  been  interrupted.  After  the  war  he 
turned  his  principal  efforts  to  the  theatre,  whilst, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  gathered  together  recollec- 
tions of  the  end  of  the  Empire,  the  siege  of  Paris 
and  the  Commtme  into  short  studies  either  histori- 
cal or  imaginative,  after  the  manner  of  Lettres  de 
Mo7i  Moulin.  No  less  than  three  volumes  were 
necessary  to  include  them,  namely  Lettres  a  tin 
Absent,  Coxites  du  Lundi  and  Robert  Helmont. 

It  is  true  that  during  this  period  he  had  been 
examining  men  and  things  very  closely;  as  early 
as  the  beginning  of  1870  he  had  already  allowed 
himself  to  be  turned  aside  from  his  preoccupations, 
which  up  to  that  time  had  been  purely  literary,  by 
the  forerunning  symptoms  of  the  hurricane;  as  an 
observer  he  followed  all  the  popular  manifestations 
and  incidents  of  politics. 

I  remember  that  one  evening,  a  few  days  before 
the  plebiscite,  he   wanted   to   drag  me   across  the 


My  Brother  and  I.  453 

Faubourg  du  Temple,  full  of  threatening  faces  and 
rumors,  to  be  present  at  an  electoral  meeting. 
Tumultuous  groups  which  were  restrained  with 
difficulty  by  an  enormous  show  of  armed  forces 
prevented  our  reaching  the  end  of  our  walk ;  battle 
had  already  begun  between  the  Parisians  and  the 
Bonapartists. 

Another  evening,  a  few  hours  after  the  assassin- 
ation of  Victor  Noir,  we  went  to  the  Ministry  of 
Justice  to  see  Emile  Ollivier  whom  up  to  that  time 
he  had  not  met.  Then  occurred  the  Fourth  of 
September  and  the  siege,  during  which  he  re- 
mained In  Paris  enrolled  as  a  volunteer  in  the 
National  Guard,  and,  notwithstanding  his  short- 
sightedness, a  great  frequenter  of  advanced  posts, 
a  fearless  searcher  after  sensations,  braving  danger 
in  order  to  have  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  every- 
thing and  of  increasing  at  the  end  of  each  exciting 
day  the  bulk  of  those  pages  of  notes,  pages  already 
charged  with  his  fine  and  closely  set  writing.  For 
nearly  two  years  his  literary  output  was  nourished 
by  these  recollections  and  in  that  way  he  has  hung 
in  his  life  work,  as  if  in  a  gallery,  a  hundred  pic- 
tures which  have  all  the  value  of  historical  docu- 
ments, owing  to  their  exactness  and  the  truth  of 
the  observation  behind  them. 

Perhaps  in  no  part  of  his  work  has  that  power- 
ful faculty  of  sight  shown  itself  in  the  same  degree 
as  in  these  short  stories,  which  are  impregnated 
besides  by  an  emotion  that  caused  his  pen  to 
tremble,  when,  hurriedly,  for  fear  he  should  for- 
get it,  he  noted    down  in   one  line  some    master 


454  Alphonse  Daudet. 

impression  which  contained  all  the  others.  Often 
a  characteristic  that  struck  him  lasted  several 
minutes.  Often  he  only  had  a  glimpse  of  his 
model ;  but  that  was  enough  for  him  to  paint  the 
picture  without  falsifying  the  likeness.  The  same 
statement  can  be  applied  to  all  his  work. 

The  Commune  obliged  him  to  fly  from  Paris. 
When  he  returned  and  was  able  to  get  to  work 
again  he  only  thought  of  books  in  which  the  events 
he  had  taken  part  in  should  be  engraved  just  as 
they  remained  in  his  memory. 

At  the  same  time,  as  I  have  said,  he  was  work- 
ing for  the  theatre.  The  failure  of  Lise  Taveniier, 
the  disappointment  as  to  V ArUsienne  put  a  stop 
to  his  energies  in  that  direction.  During  a  repre- 
sentation of  the  latter  play  the  idea  struck  him  to 
make  a  novel  with  scenes  in  Paris  and  he  wrote 
Fromont  Jcune  et  Risier  Atn^\n  1873,  without  fore- 
seeing the  immense  success  which  that  volume  was 
to  bring  him,  although  its  prior  publication  in  Le 
Bien  Public  could  scarcely  have  passed  unper- 
ceived.  With  this  novel  Charpentier  the  publisher 
began  his  series  of  volumes  with  immense  editions. 
A  few  weeks  were  enough  to  distribute  that  novel 
through  the  entire  world ;  it  was  read  in  foreign 
parts  just  as  much  as  in  France,  either  in  the  orig- 
inal or  translations. 

This  popularity  during  the  first  days  of  its  ap- 
pearance did  not  exhaust  its  success ;  at  the  time 
I  write  (188 1)  several  thousand  copies  are  printed 
every  year.  The  Academic  Frangaise  itself  wanted 
to    share    in    the    manifestations    that  took    place 


My  Brother  mid  I.  455 

about  the  name  of  Alphonse  Daudet  and  it  decreed 
the  most  literary  of  the  prizes  which  it  annually 
awards  to  his  novel. 

Owing  to  the  force  of  events  this  study  of  mine 
has  little  by  little  so  taken  on  the  character  of  an 
apology  that  at  present  I  feel  a  certain  embarrass- 
ment in  saying  what  I  think  of  Fromotit  Jeune  et 
Risler  Ain^. 

When  speaking  of  Alphonse  Daudet  I  am  able 
to  offer  an  understanding  of  the  man  by  means  of 
a  simple  story  of  the  events  of  his  life,  just  as  one 
imparts  knowledge  as  to  an  historical  episode  by 
the  aid  of  authentic  documents,  but  I  could  hardly 
judge  his  literary  work  otherwise  than  by  express- 
ing a  personal  opinion  in  which  admiration  would 
hold  the  highest  place ;  so  that  my  judgment 
would  be  suspected  and  therefore  without  value. 
It  would  add  nothing  to  the  authority  of  this 
chapter  of  literary  history  and  so  I  renounce  the 
occasion  of  formulating  it. 

But  what  I  have  the  right  to  affirm  is  this,  that 
the  truth  of  the  characters  and  the  actuality  {vecu) 
of  the  events  were  the  determining  cause  of  the 
good  fortune  that  befell  the  first  long  novel  by 
Alphonse  Daudet.  No  one  bothered  himself  to 
sec  whether  the  plan  was  very  new  or  whether  in 
one  way  or  another  it  did  not  have  connecting 
threads  with  some  other  plot  which  had  been 
already  used  in  books  more  or  less  widely  spread. 
What  the  reader  saw  above  all  things  and  what 
moved,  persuaded  and  charmed  him,  was  much  less 
the   moral    of  a  story  which   arrayed    in  contest 


456  Alphonse  Daudet. 

commercial  honor  and  the  honor  of  the  domestic 
hearth,  than  the  simplicity  of  the  intrigue,  the  truth 
of  the  characters  to  life,  the  poetry  and  emotion 
scattered  with  both  hands  through  those  altogether 
charming  chapters. 

Our  older  men  of  letters  have  often  told  how  in 
other  times  an  entire  generation  took  the  greatest, 
most  passionate  interest  in  some  hero  of  romance 
—  Monte  Cristo,  Fleur-de-Marie,  d'Artagnan  — 
whose  unlikeness  to  nature  at  last  caused  the  interest 
of  living  men  for  fictitious  beings  to  grow  stale.  It 
is  a  long  time  now  since  manifestations  provoked 
by  a  book  have  fallen  to  very  quiet  lines,  but  they 
were  seen  afresh  on  the  appearance  of  Fromont 
Jeiine  ct  Risler  Aiiu^.  Little  girl  Chebc,  Desiree 
the  lame  girl  are  popular  characters,  whilst  Delo- 
belle  has  become  a  classic.  His  name  will  remain 
as  an  epithet  suited  to  define  all  those  in  his  pro- 
fession, fashioned  after  his  image  and  resembling 
him,  who  go  out  in  the  world.  People  say :  "  He  's 
a  Delobelle  "  just  as  they  say ;  "  He 's  a  Harpagon." 

After  this  novel  Alphonse  Daudet  wrote  y<rzc>{'. 
In  that  case  also  the  impulse  started  with  a  simple 
story  which  came  to  his  knowledge  and  which  the 
chance  of  neighborhood  permitted  him  to  follow 
through  its  various  episodes  as  a  witness  or  confi- 
dant ;  this  formed  the  basis  of  his  novel.  Faithful 
to  his  usual  system,  he  wove  in  succession  about 
this  actual  story  various  characters  who  in  reality 
never  played  any  part  therein,  but  who  neverthe- 
less had  actually  lived  and  had  posed  before  him 
without     their    knowing     it.       These    characters 


My  Brother  and  I.  457 

themselves  were  completed  by  characteristics  and 
phrases  which  belonged  to  others  but  could  be 
adapted  to  their  character  and  nature. 

This  labor  of  adaptation  and  recomposition  lies 
at  the  root  of  all  Alphonse  Daudet's  novels  —  un- 
less it  might  be  of  Le  Nabab,  where  he  has  trans- 
ferred two  characters  to  his  pages  without  changing 
anything  in  their  historical  physiognomy,  namely 
the  two  principal  actors  —  I  do  not  know  of  a  sin- 
gle person  whom  he  has  put  in  his  works  without 
having  composed  the  character  in  this  way  out  of 
bits  and  pieces.  After  the  appearance  of  Rois  en 
Exit  there  was  a  veritable  craze  of  curiosity  to 
know  which  of  the  living  my  brother  had  aimed 
at  and  portrayed,  a  curiosity  provoked  by  the 
desire  to  tear  away  the  masks.  Well,  there  is  not 
a  single  one  among  the  types  of  that  book  which 
is  completely  and  personally  real ;  a  number  of 
models  were  needed  in  order  to  compose  a  single 
one. 

This  is  even  true  of  Niima  Roinnestan.  When 
this  novel  began  to  appear  my  fellow-countryman 
Senator  Numa  Baragnon,  after  reading  the  splen- 
did description  of  the  Arena  on  a  day  of  popular 
festival,  wrote  to  me  at  the  close  of  one  of  his  let- 
ters :  "  I  have  a  great  mind  to  sign  this  letter 
Numa  Roumestan,  because  people  say  that  it  is 
myself  your  brother  wished  to  draw,  but  alas,  it  is 
a  very  long  time  since  the  people  have  taken  the 
horses  out  oi  viy  carriage  !  " 

On  the  other  hand  there  were  several  people  I 
might  designate  who  were   a  trifle   uneasy,   con- 


458  Alp  house  Daudet. 

vinced  that  Alphonse  Daudet  had  published  his 
book  in  order  to  present  them  in  complete  life  to 
the  curiosity  of  the  public.  They  were  mistaken, 
all  of  them;  the  continuation  of  the  novel  must 
have  proved  that  to  their  satisfaction.  As  was  his 
good  right,  the  author  had  taken  a  bit  from  each 
of  them ;  there  was  not  one  of  them  who  had 
posed  to  him  for  the  entire  figure.  It  is  sufficient 
to  be  acquainted  with  the  list  of  politicians  of  our 
times  to  recognize  what  belongs  to  one  and  what 
to  the  other. 

But  I  return  to  Jack.  My  brother  had  talked  to 
me  a  great  deal  as  to  this  novel  before  writing  it ; 
having  been  placed  in  the  management  of  the 
Journal  Ojfficiel,  I  asked  him  for  the  right  to  pub- 
lish it  in  the  Bulletin  Fran^ais  which  we  had  just 
founded,  I  representing  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior 
in  partnership  with  limile  de  Girardin  and  Witters- 
heim,  to  take  the  place  of  the  Petit  Journal  Offi- 
ciel,  which  had  disappeared  with  the  Empire. 

Alphonse  already  had  charge  of  the  dramatic 
review  in  the  Officicl.  I  had  confided  it  to  him, 
having  with  good  reason  foreseen  that  his  talents 
would  justify  too  well  the  appointment  which  I 
made  that  any  one  should  think  of  accusing  me  of 
nepotism.  A  wish  to  give  a  profitable  brilliancy 
to  the  newly-born  paper  placed  in  my  control  was 
sure  to  justify  in  the  same  way  the  appearance  in 
that  paper  of  a  novel  signed  "  Alphonse  Daudet." 

But  when  he  brought  it  to  me  I  was  a  little 
frightened  at  the  bringing  in  toward  the  beginning 
of  the  book  of  an  establishment  run  by  the  Jesuits. 


My  Brother  and  I.  459 

The  official  character  of  our  two  papers  had  already- 
occasioned  me  a  certain  embarrassment  and  was 
about  to  give  me  more,  all  arising  from  the  diffi- 
culty of  granting  liberty  to  writers  without  impli- 
cating the  government.  There  are  certain  Deputies 
who  pick  carefully  to  pieces  all  the  non-official 
part  of  the  paper,  articles  on  art,  articles  on  liter- 
ature and  even  the  chronicle  of  daily  events,  from 
which  I  was  expected  to  banish  every  mention  of 
crime,  suicide  or  attempted  murder.  They  carried 
their  complaints  to  the  Minister  for  every  line 
which  failed  to  please  them.  The  papers  of  that 
period  are  full  of  criticisms  and  attacks  which 
sprang  from  the  "liberties"  taken  by  the  editor 
of  the  government  journals. 

I  remember  especially  one  circumstance  which 
assumed  the  proportions  of  an  event  of  importance 
in  our  humble  family  of  editors  bound  together 
by  the  strictest  fellowship.  My  learned  comrade 
Bouchut,  while  alluding  to  I  know  not  what  mal- 
ady of  the  nerves  in  an  article  devoted  to  a  medi- 
cal book,  had  timidly  insinuated  that  it  would  be 
easy  to  explain  the  ecstasy  of  Saint  Theresa  by 
physiology.  The  Hon.  M.  Keller  discovered  in 
that  very  simple  and  very  true  statement  a  denial 
of  miracles ;  he  told  me  this  during  a  meeting  of 
the  Chamber  at  Versailles,  and  after  having  tried 
in  vain  to  drag  the  promise  of  a  denial  of  the  article 
out  of  me,  he  marched  off  to  point  the  matter  out 
to  M.  Buffet,  the  President  of  the  Council  and 
Minister  of  the  Interior,  who  had  been  but  a  few 
hours  in  office. 


460  Alp  house  Daudet. 

Although  M.  Buffet  would  certainly  be  incapable 
of  exacting  from  an  honest  man  an  act  which 
degraded  his  professional  dignity,  still,  at  first 
blush  he  insisted,  in  order  to  put  it  through,  that 
I  should  disavow  what  my  collaborator  had  said. 
One  may  imagine  what  my  answer  was.  Insist- 
ence on  one  side,  resistance  on  the  other.  The 
incident  lasted  two  days  and  I  could  only  cut  it 
short  by  declaring  that  it  was  true  they  could  take 
my  office  from  me,  but  I  never  would  disavow  my 
own  fellow-worker.  Whether  it  was  kindliness  or 
weakness,  M.  Buffet  disliked  extreme  measures 
and  the  affair  came  to  an  end  by  means  of  a  letter 
which  Dr.  Bouchut  wrote  me,  in  which  with  a 
good  deal  of  cleverness  he  demonstrated  that  both 
of  us  were  above  caring  for  our  misadventure. 

I  have  only  told  this  item  from  our  political  cus- 
toms in  order  to  explain  the  reasons  which  made 
me  hesitate  to  publish y<t^>^.  Having  been  made  ac- 
quainted with  my  embarrassment  and  troubles,  my 
brother  refused  to  discuss  my  objections  and  took 
his  novel  to  the  hospitable  office  of  the  Moniteur, 
which  is  full  of  illustrious  souvenirs  and  literary 
traditions.     Paul  Dalloz  hastened  to  accept  it. 

This  book  did  not  meet  at  the  publisher's  the 
success  of  the  preceding  one ;  which  can  only  be  ex- 
plained by  the  necessity  in  which  Dentu  found  him- 
self of  publishing  it  in  two  volumes  and  raising  the 
price,  for  never  had  the  fine  qualities  of  author  and 
poet  shown  themselves  in  greater  splendor,  never 
in  the  same  degree  had  he  expressed  his  affection 
for  the  small  and  humble  persons  of  this  world,  nor 


My  Brother  and  I.  461 

shown  better  his  gifts  of  moving  others  when  brought 
in  contact  with  his  own  emotion,  his  gift  of  handling 
irony  and  describing  the  scenery  in  which  he  causes 
his  characters  to  Hve. 

Whether  he  is  laying  bare  the  peacock  brain  of 
Ida  de  Barancy  or  is  showing  us  d'Argenton,  the 
most  important  of  the  good-for-nothings,  squatting 
so  proudly  in  the  midst  of  his  nullity  and  folly; 
whether  he  takes  us  in  the  footsteps  of  poor  little 
Jack  as  he  escapes  from  the  Moronval  academy, 
overwhelmed  by  the  terror  of  the  dark,  of  the 
silent  and  the  unknown,  as  he  wanders  lost  through 
the  fields  wrapped  in  shadows,  or  relates  to  us  the 
martyrdom  of  the  little  negro  king;  whether  he 
describes  the  quiet  landscapes  on  the  banks  of  the 
Seine  or  takes  us  to  Indret  to  make  us  laugh  with 
B^lisaire  and  cry  with  Jack ;  whether  he  opens  to 
our  view  the  still  interior  of  the  Rivals  or  allows 
us  to  be  present  at  the  last  years  of  d'Argenton's 
victim  —  in  every  case  his  talent  is  shown  with  the 
rarest  power.  And  although  people  have  pre- 
tended that  he  is  lacking  in  imagination,  making 
of  this  by  turns  a  fault  and  a  merit,  yet,  through 
the  arrangement  and  logical  accumulation  of 
events  which  may  perhaps  have  happened  before, 
he  has  produced  in  every  respect  the  illusion  of  a 
complete  and  a  personal  invention. 

Moreover  types  of  humanity  follow  each  other 
closely,  numerous,  multifold  and  original,  in  a  fairy- 
like setting  of  descriptions  with  flesh  upon  their 
bones,  muscles  under  the  skin,  blood  in  their 
veins  and  all  the  forces  of  actual  life. 


462,  Alpho7tse  Daudet. 

Jack  is  as  free  from  the  anxious  care  for  actual- 
ity visible  in  Le  Nabab,  Les  Rois  en  Exit  and  Numa 
Roumestan,  as  Fromont  Jeiuie  et  Risler  Aine  is,  but 
when  considered  by  itself  Jack  will  always  be 
found  a  species  of  revelation  as  a  study  of  manners 
and  yet  rigorously  exact  to  life  and  filled  with  a 
vivid  sentiment  of  modernity.  Looked  at  as  a 
whole,  this  work  seems  to  me  a  transition,  after 
which  Alphonse  Daudet  came  to  create  for  the 
modern  novel  a  new  mold  by  introducing  our 
social  and  political  history  through  living  charac- 
ters and  inaugurating  what  I  may  call  his  second 
manner,  characterized  by  that  preoccupation  for 
actuality  of  which  I  have  just  spoken. 

That  preoccupation  itself  starts  from  a  constant 
anxiety  to  reach  the  truth.  Naturally  its  result 
was  to  complete  that  masterly  faculty  in  his 
genius  which  turns  the  pen  into  a  brush,  gives 
the  saliency  of  a  painting  to  style  and  causes 
color  to  spring  up  through  the  arrangement  of 
words;  it  brings  men  and  things  to  the  eyes  of 
the  reader,  though  fixed  on  a  printed  page,  with 
a  power  of  vision  quite  as  intense  and  tangible  in 
its  contours  as  life  itself 

And  here  it  is  fitting  to  add  that  the  quality 
which  gives  especial  value  to  the  books  of 
Alphonse  Daudet  and  assures  serious  chances 
of  durability  to  them  is  the  fact  that  as  a  whole 
they  constitute  an  exact  image  of  his  time. 
Whether  stories  or  novels  or  even  intimate  studies 
like  those  which  furnish  forth  the  volume  Les 
Fcmnics  d' Artistes,  one  of  the  less  known  books 


My  Brother  and  /.  463 

which  I  recommend  to  connoisseurs,  all  include  a 
"  documentary  quality "  which  greatly  increases 
their  value.  This  story  found  in  Lettres  a  un 
Absent  or  that  episode  in  Les  Rots  en  Exit  will  be 
found  a  page  of  history  which  those  persons  ought 
to  read  before  they  set  to  work  who  may  under- 
take to  study  us,  their  predecessors,  in  the  future, 
as  to  events,  as  to  family  life  and  as  to  mankind. 
The  death  and  funeral  of  the  Due  de  Mora,  the 
visit  of  the  Bey  of  Tunis  to  the  castle  of  the  Nabob, 
the  studio  of  Felicia  Ruys,  the  Levis  agency,  the 
watch  under  arms  and  the  trip  of  Numa  Roume- 
stan  as  Minister  to  his  native  town  —  there  is 
history  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  not  the 
official  history  of  facts,  but  that  history  of  passions 
and  appetites  and  aspirations  which  help  to  make 
them  understood  !  Merimee  was  quite  right  when 
he  said  he  was  ready  to  barter  Thucydides  for  a 
single  page  of  the  Memoirs  of  Aspasia.  No  less 
is  required  to  brighten  with  a  luminous  ray  a 
vanished  civilization. 

By  giving  a  commentary  on  history  in  that  way, 
by  taking  possession  in  such  fashion  of  men  and 
things,  the  modern  novel  has  made  a  glorious 
conquest.  Moreover  it  has  imposed  new  convic- 
tions upon  the  science  of  history.  Among  the 
younger  writers  all  those  who  occupy  themselves 
with  that  science  have  perceived  that  since  the 
novel  has  taken  something  from  them,  history 
must  also  take  something  from  the  novel.  It  has 
borrowed  from  the  novel  its  form  and  analyses,  its 
descriptions  and  even  its  dialogues. 


464  Alphonse  Daudet. 

Only  a  little  while  ago,  with  rare  exceptions, 
even  the  most  distinguished  historians  would  have 
thought  that  they  were  derogating  from  the  rules 
of  their  art  and  the  majesty  of  the  past  and  from 
memoirs  in  the  grand  style;  they  would  have 
thought  that  events  were  degraded  if  they  de- 
parted from  a  cold  and  restrained  style  by  placing 
their  characters  within  a  descriptive  framework, 
while  showing  us  their  features  and  adapting  their 
actions  to  the  proportions  of  daily  life  and  by 
making  them  act  and  talk  just  as  we  act  and  talk 
ourselves. 

The  modern  school  has  modified  and  trans- 
formed the  procedure;  it  will  modify  and  trans- 
form it  still  more  and  that  peaceful  revolution  will 
have  been  ocasioned  by  the  transformation  of  the 
novel,  which  itself  has  been  performed  through  the 
power  of  public  taste.  For  what  those  of  us  who 
have  any  sort  of  care,  lest  we  drown  in  the  sea  of 
general  indifference,  should  never  forget  is  the  fact 
that  it  is  reality,  it  is  life,  that  the  present  genera- 
tion exacts  from  artists.  The  novel  for  its  own 
sake,  that  is  to  say  fiction,  is  dead,  very  dead. 
What  the  reader  expects  to  find  in  books  that 
demand  his  attention  is  himself,  his  vices  and 
virtues,  his  own  image,  everything  which  by  him- 
self he  would  not  be  able  to  see.  The  art  of  the 
novelist,  like  that  of  the  painter,  as  well  as  the  art 
of  the  historian,  consists  in  showing  himself  well 
to  himself  under  the  different  forms  which  each  of 
these  kinds  of  literature  demand. 

That  is,  and  I  know  it  well,  or  very  nearly  that, 


My  Brother  and  I.  465 

the  doctrine  of  the  naturalistic  school.  The  deci- 
siveness with  which  that  school  has  made  itself  the 
owner  of  these  truths  by  endeavoring  to  claim  as  its 
own  the  personality  of  Alphonse  Daudet  has  not 
done  anything  less  for  its  own  success  than  has 
the  energetic  temperament  which  belongs  to  the 
most  famous  of  its  apostles.  But  whatever  may 
be  the  scientific  formulas,  perhaps  a  trifle  puerile, 
with  which  he  has  clothed  them  in  order  to  deco- 
rate his  conception  of  the  novel  with  a  special  and 
personal  merit  of  its  own,  we  can  hardly  admit 
that  these  truths  are  his  own  invention  or  that 
these  rules  are  exclusively  his. 

They  had  been  employed  before  he  wrote  them 
on  his  banner  and  entered  the  fight  under  their 
name.  Without  going  back  to  Balzac,  when  one 
considers  how  great  the  advance  is  which  they 
have  made  since  his  time  and  the  large  share  which 
they  hold  in  our  preoccupations,  it  is  very  difficult 
not  to  attribute  the  chief  reason  for  their  progress 
to  Edmond  and  Jules  de  Goncourt.  There  are  the 
two  fathers  of  the  naturalistic  novel !  L  Assommoir 
had  its  ancestor :  Germmie  Lacerteux!  There  stand 
the  principles  of  the  school  put  into  practical  form 
by  that  manifestation  ol  a  manly  genius  which 
never  tried  either  to  make  a  dogmatic  profession 
of  them  nor  to  impose  them  upon  others,  and 
which  never  cared  to  demonstrate  their  power 
save  through  the  uses  which  were  made  of  them. 
So  then,  if  it  is  not  permissible  for  the  most  famous 
disciple  of  naturalism  to  proclaim  himself  its  in- 
ventor without  committing  a  grave  injustice,  it  is 

30 


466  Alphonse  Daudet. 

all  the  easier  for  him  to  ally  the  Goncourts  to  his 
school,  which  is  indeed  theirs. 

But  he  would  not  be  able  to  introduce  in  the 
same  way  Alphonse  Daudet,  whose  qualities  as 
poet  and  author,  whose  exquisite  delicacy  and 
deep  tenderness,  as  well  as  his  repugnance  for 
everything  that  is  trivial  or  coarse,  protest  against 
the  use  that  some  people  have  wished  to  make  of 
his  name  in  a  party  which  only  owes  its  victories 
to  its  chiefs,  a  party  which  has  not  yet  founded 
anything  and  which  would  suddenly  vanish  if  it 
lost  them. 

No,  Alphonse  Daudet  cannot  be  enlisted  in  those 
ranks  any  more  than  others,  for  he  is  too  little  a  man 
of  schools  and  dogmas,  too  averse  to  every  kind  of 
ostracism,  too  proudly  independent  and,  to  sum 
up  everything  in  a  word,  too  completely  an  artist ! 
Whatever  effort  may  be  made  to  put  a  label  on 
him,  that  effort  will  be  in  vain.  Alphonse  Daudet 
is  himself  That  is  the  essence  of  his  inborn  origi- 
nality, the  personal  mark  of  his  life  work. 

Petites-Dali.es  (Seine-Inferieure). 
August-September,  1881. 


-1   ---! 


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